SENIOR ICE DANCING
Madison Chock and Evan Bates perform to Dr. Zhivago en route to a silver-medal fi nish.
Agosto — have won fi ve U.S. crowns. One more, and Davis and White, already the most-decorated U.S. ice dancers internationally, would stand alone. Chock and Bates, who began skating togeth- er in the summer of 2011, put storytelling skills to work in both of their programs. First, Chock played a circus tightrope walker in the team’s quirky short dance set to the ethereal Cirque du Soleil “Quidam,” and the team earned Level 4 for all fi ve elements, including a fast-moving ro- tational lift. In a romantic free dance to the sweeping
score of Dr. Zhivago, the skaters used their height diff erential to good advantage, showing complex but smoothly executed lifts. T ey placed second to Davis and White in both sections, and took second overall with 175.91 points. “T ere is no real substitute for time spent together and last season we didn’t have much of it,” Bates, 23, said. “T is year we’ve had a lot more. T ere is just a night and day diff erence that we feel on the ice with each other.” T e team’s coach, Igor Shpilband, used in-
put received from judges after Cup of China to strengthen the free dance. “T ey do a lot more to bring the story out, and the elements are stronger,” Shpilband, who trains the skaters in Novi, Mich., said. “T ey
26 MARCH 2013
Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani give a stellar performance with their Memoirs of a Geisha free dance.
proved this year they are very competitive, they have two good programs, their skating is consis- tent and they are ready.” Two points in deductions for extended (too long) lifts — one in their short dance to South American pan fl ute music, and another in their free dance to the Memoirs of a Geisha soundtrack — cost Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani, who were edged out of the silver medal by 1.70 points. T e siblings, who train alongside Davis and White in Canton, worked with Miyako Tachi- bana, an esteemed practitioner and teacher of traditional Japanese dance — and the associate choreographer and principal Japanese dance con- sultant for the Geisha fi lm — to help them refi ne their portrayals. “We’re very proud of the progress we’ve
made in three seasons in senior,” Alex, 21, said. “T is year in particular we feel we’ve made a huge jump forward in maturity, look on the ice as well as the programs we are trying to tackle.” “We wanted to challenge ourselves by doing
something new this year, and our programs are very diff erent than what we’ve done in past sea- sons,” Maia, 18, said. Zoueva isn’t concerned about the deduc-
tions. “T at kind of thing is easy to fi x,” she said.
“T ey got Level 4 on all of their hard elements, that is the big thing.” Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue,
third in the U.S. last season, placed fourth in Omaha after two entertaining and well-skated programs, including a short dance to music from Titanic and a fl amenco free dance. Although the team from Detroit Skating Club showed great on-ice chemistry and solid elements, in the out- standing fi eld, their technical marks and program components were just a shade lower than those of the top couples. “I think we did a strong performance,”
Hubbell, 21, said. “T ere are a lot of really good teams in the top so we felt a lot of pressure today. We thought we were using it to our advantage, all of those nerves, so we’re happy with what we did.”
Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-
Schmitt were fi fth after two engaging programs including a short dance to country music, and free dance to an Adele medley, including “Turn- ing Tables” and “Rumour Has It.” “We were happy with our performance, we
put ourselves out there and we really enjoyed it,” Giulietti-Schmitt, 27, said after the free dance. “All of our elements went smoothly so we couldn’t hope for anything more.”
PHOTOS BY JAY ADEFF
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