Nichol looking for the next gold record
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Lori Nichol is a figure skating muse.
Just as Euterpe was the ancient Greek muse of music, Nichol is an inspirational visionary for modern figure skating lyricism, matching athletes to programs, bringing music to the ice, choreographing and styling the whole package.
She did, memorably, “Love Story” for Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. She did, memorably, “Salome” and “Dream of Desdemona” for Michelle Kwan.
When the team event begins here Friday morning with men’s and pairs short program competition — hours ahead of the Pyeongchang Olympics opening ceremony — her entries will include reigning world pairs champions Han Cong and Sui Wenjing of China performing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and their compatriot Jin Boyang skating to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
In the later long program segment, Nichol has designed “Mao’s Last Dance,” from the movie soundtrack, for American men’s sensation Nathan Chen, “Turandot” for Han and Sui, “Afternoon of a Faun” for Carolina Kostner and “Rhapsody in Blue” for Canadian national champion Gabrielle Daleman — a program the 20-year-old from Newmarket resurrected from last year, ditching her “Gladiator” number halfway through the Grand Prix season.
“Gabby had a very challenging fall with illness,” notes Nichol, referring to Daleman’s comeback from abdominal surgery. “It’s just my opinion but there was a negative association with the music and the choreography of ‘Gladiator.’ She felt more comfortable going back to the free program which had given her so many great memories and a worlds medal the year before. At this stage, Gabby needed the spunkiness of ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ ”
Daleman owns that program. She inhabits it. And Rhapsody helped restore her Canadian title over Kaetlyn Osmond. Both young women are capable of snatching an individual medal at these Games, even up against prohibitive talent from Russia.
There’s no underestimating the significance of a routine that clicks simultaneously as eye-candy for the fans and a canvas for athleticism. The chore for Nichol, and a small circle of elite figure skating choreographers, is to incorporate the technical elements — jumps and spins and footwork — seamlessly into the overall layout, keeping in mind pace and presentation whilst allowing skaters to catch their breath. And understanding what is within the athlete’s ability.
First comes selecting a piece of music.
“I’m constantly listening to music, watching modern dance, ballet, any kind of performing art, looking at Spotify, iTunes,” Nichol says. “I’m envisioning what kind of skater a piece would be good for. Then I start to dream ideas and concepts. And then I really pick it apart.”
It’s a bit of a source for mockery, especially in Olympic years, what music is heard in the figure skating arena, over and over and over again. Classical music is clearly preferred by judges. But how many times can an audience be subjected to “Carmen” or “Black Swan” or “Bolero” or even The Beatles?
Yet Nichol took an old chestnut, “Love Story,” and rendered it unique for Sale and Pelletier, grasping how much the couple resembled Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw in the movie. The program blended prep- py and poignancy. It became a signature piece.
In “Salome,” for Kwan, Nichol says she was flat-out “tired of tits and ass in skating” and searched for music that evoked a different kind of femininity. “I strongly believed that we were about much more, that we could be represented as being strong and sensual and powerful. We could be many things.”
With Kostner, unusually tall for a figure skater, Nichol saw a silhouette that fit the “Faun” score. “She has these long limbs and is very attentive to proper body line and nuance.’’ Years back, she likened the young Kostner to a colt. “So it wasn’t much of a stretch to go from a colt to a faun,” laughs Nichol.
“It wasn’t just the look. It was that it had the right feeling, that it would keep her calm enough to be able to skate well under pressure — probably the most important factor in choosing a piece for someone.”
Figure skating choreography is inherently complex because this is still a sport; the elements are the bottom-line focus. And there are so many rules imposed, the most dramatic adjustment mandated when the scoring system was changed from the old 6.0 template. Now skaters try to rack up marks by striving for higher levels of execu- tion and component scores, which has impacted artistry and interpretation. Some of it is, frankly, boring.
“We’re dictated as to what we must do,” says Nichol, “and yet the composer of the music didn’t have skating in mind. So the phrasing of the music is immensely difficult, to make sure the movement phrasing matches the music. There’s a lot of pressure to stay true to a piece of music but also do what the skater needs. If a skater doesn’t want to do two spins before a jump, for instance, that dictates how we’re going to use that piece of music. Because spinning music is obviously very different from jumping music or step sequence movement.”
Finding time and space for the quads is a particular challenge, Nichol adds, because the element can be jarring to fluidity, especially if the skater falls.
In Jin’s free skate, to “Star Wars,” he executes three jumping passes in the opening phase. The skater’s nickname is Sunshine, a reference to his buoyant personality, and Nichol has tried to reflect that characteristic in his program, using a bit of the movie soundtrack from a humorous scene in the cantina, with all its wacky customers. “We have some fun with that. But even there we have to balance it out with recovery time. It lightens up the seriousness of what comes before, though, emotionally, so that he’s ready for the next quad.”
“These quad kings are a whole new ball game because they have to do extraordinary extreme jumping. People don’t understand how much effort can be expended and then you have to get through the rest of the program. So I’m balancing the extreme physical needs of the quad with the artistic aspect.”
Some skaters are more heavily involved in the entire music and choreography process. Others leave it to the experts.
Patrick Chan, for instance — who’s been choreographed in the past by Nichol, even briefly coached by her — collaborated closely with David Wilson on his programs this season: “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen in the short, “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas in the long. “Hallelujah” only makes sense as a performance piece now because the rules were changed, allowing the use of lyrics for the first time at these Games.
“There had to be some kind of emotional connection to it,” Chan said this week of his program, at his third and last Olympics, “the meaning behind this specific season, this specific time in my career.
“‘Dust in the Wind’ is kind of my personal philosophy in life now. Especially in an Olympic year, it’s important to come back to remembering the perspective, what the Olympics mean in the rest of your life. And ‘Hallelujah’ is kind of the finale for me. It’s about coming back to the purity of skating and my strengths.”
That’s a lot of narrative to stuff into 2:50 minutes, max, with seven required elements. But that’s the choreographer’s job. The skater only has to skate it.