7/04/00
The 'Musical' Sports
Summary:
In the summer Olympics, there's dressage, women's gymnastics, and synchronised swimming. In the winter Games, ice-skating. They're all judged sports, where it's not what you do but the way that you do it that matters. But does does the combination of sport and art result in a whole that's greater than the sum of the parts, or just plain kitsch?
Amanda Smith speaks with MARY HANNA, the only Australian to compete in dressage at an Olympic Games; DEBBIE MUIR, who coaches the Australian synchronised swimming team; top young gymnast TRUDY McINTOSH and her coaches PEGGY LIDDICK and MIKE CALTON; and former ice-dancing champion CHRISTOPHER DEAN.
Details or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda Smith: On The Sports Factor: When sport meets art, in the ‘musical’ sports: synchronised swimming, artistic gymnastics, dressage, and ice-dancing.
Music, and choreography, are essential components to these ‘judged’ sports, where it’s not what you do but the way that you do it that matters. But it’s not always easy to make art conform to the rules of competitive sport. Christopher Dean, of the world-famous, world-champion, ice-dancing duet of the 1980s, Torvill and Dean, worked on ways of bending the rules.
MUSIC - Ravel’s ‘Bolero’
Christopher Dean: The problem with skating, you’ve got a time limit; you’ve got a four minute time frame. We actually couldn’t fit ‘Bolero’ into four minutes, it’s four-and-a-half minutes, so this is where the choreography started. We had to be inventive. In the rules it says the skating will start to be timed from the minute the skater starts to skate. We both started on our knees. So theoretically, they can’t start the stopwatch until one of us places a blade on the ice. So we sort of had a prelude almost, a bending of the rules.
Amanda Smith: And more from Christopher Dean, athlete-cum-artist, later in the program.
Now, in Sydney next week, synchronised swimming teams and duets from 34 countries will be competing for a qualifying place in the Olympic Games.
Debbie Muir coached the Canadian synchronised swimming team to gold and silver medals in two Olympics, and for the past five years, she’s been the head coach of the Australian squad. Now, it seems to me that in sports like synchronised swimming, where competition is combined with artistic elements, there’s the possibility of getting the best of both worlds, (of sport, and art), or the worst of both worlds. But is that being fair on synchronised swimming?
Debbie Muir: Yes, actually it’s a really good comment. And I think in Australia particularly, a lot of people think it’s got the worst, because they don’t really understand the sport. But we do have that opportunity to show some amazing athleticism and to be able to put the body through those kind of movements in a choreographed sense, to create a piece that’s entertaining and artistic, is certainly our challenge and is kind of what I think keeps the swimmers motivated in the sport.
Amanda Smith: Yes, is that a fine line you walk between creating a routine that’s athletic and spectacular, or one that’s a bit kitch?
Debbie Muir: Yes, it really is, you have to be very careful because if you’re not, you can go out there and just look silly in the water. Like, ‘What are they trying to do? Is this just some local drama thing?’ So you have to be really careful. I think that with the training that most of the swimmers and countries are doing nowadays, they are very much into that physical mode, and very much into showing off that it is a sport.
Amanda Smith: Yes, although wasn’t it the French team who before the Atlanta Olympics, planned a routine with a kind of Third Reich/Holocaust theme that they didn’t end up doing I think because others thought it was in poor taste.
Debbie Muir: Yes, good memory. It’s true, they were going to do a routine to Schindler’s List and it was about the Holocaust and it really was in poor taste, because it trivialised the whole thing, you know, how can you portray something so devastating in a five minute routine that’s for competition? And they didn’t do it in the end, and I think that people probably learned a big lesson from that.
Amanda Smith: Now I think that people are beginning to recognise the skill and athleticism that’s required for synchronised swimming, though it still does remain the butt of a few jokes. But do you think it’s in the packaging that causes that? The costumes, the music, the smiles, that kind of hampers synchronised swimming from being taken seriously as a sport?
Debbie Muir: Yes I think that’s part of it. Certainly if I had it my way, we would do away with all that kind of costuming and that kind of thing, because I think it does take away from the athleticism and if you don’t understand the sport and you just see the costumes and that kind of thing, it really takes away from it.
But on the other hand, I think maybe what the biggest problem is, is the lack of education of this sport in this country. People just don’t understand it, and as they’re seeing it and being exposed to it more and more, they are really seeing that it is a sport, and are quite impressed with the kind of work that we put in.
Amanda Smith: Do others feel the same way as you, though? Do you think we might see less of that sort of costuming and theatricality in synchronised swimming, and a move to more the sporty kind of side of it?
Debbie Muir: Yes I think it’s probably 50-50 around the world. Because of the figure skating just recently started to get more and more into very, very fancy costumes and we kind of went on that theme route, thinking that we could attract the same number of large crowds and that kind of thing, and make it more entertaining. And now it’s almost become you have to go out there with your rhinestones and your sparkles, to show that you’re a serious country and that you’re a rich country and that your swimmers get the very best, it’s almost like selling the swimmers. And so countries are a little bit afraid to pull back because they don’t want to be jeopardised, given that we’re a judged sport. So it sort of ebbs and flows. I’m hoping it does change, but I’m not sure that everybody shares our view.
Amanda Smith: Debbie Muir, the national coach of Australian synchronised swimming. And the Olympic qualifying event for synchronised swimming starts next Monday in Sydney.
Meanwhile, in Melbourne, the Australian dressage championships are under way, also an Olympic qualifying event. Mary Hanna was the only Australian who competed in the dressage at the Atlanta Olympics in ’96. And she’s aiming to do so again in Sydney. So, what’s involved in the aesthetics of dressage? And do horses actually enjoy the rigours and precision of dressage competition? Now, I can’t ask a horse that question, but I can ask a rider: Mary Hanna.
Mary Hanna: Well I find that the good horses, I am absolutely sure that they do enjoy it. I mean I can feel with the horse that he can be quite pleased with himself when he learns something. I work a lot with stallions and I find that they’re very clever, and you know, a lot of the problems come when the horse is actually thinking ahead so much of what you want, he tries so hard that he anticipates a movement. I mean they do that. I mean for instance, when I was at the Olympics I remember in the grand prix test coming round and one of the first things that you have to do is make a transition from trot to canter and then do an extended canter on the diagonal line. And I came round the corner, and the horse knew the test really well because he’s done it so many times. And I could feel he really knew this was really a big occasion and he’s thinking to himself, ‘I know what happens next, I canter.’ And it was like he was saying, ‘Can I do it now? Can I do it now?’ and he did it three steps too early. But he wasn’t being naughty, it was just he was so anxious to do it and to please me. And the good horses, they really do want to please you, they’re anxious to do it, and they get a tremendous feeling of being clever when they actually achieve what you’re asking.
Amanda Smith: So, I know this is all about degrees of skill, but what are the things that a rider and horse are trying to achieve to get the most points in a dressage competition?
Mary Hanna: There’s got to be a great deal of harmony between the horse and the rider. It must appear that the rider is really doing nothing, that the rider is sitting there and the horse is magically performing all the required movements. There must be rhythm and tempo and harmony in the whole picture. The requirements at the highest level are that there are a variety of movements that must be performed in a set pattern.
Amanda Smith: Well now, Australians have been very successful internationally I think in show jumping and three-day eventing especially the rough and tumble part of the cross-country. In the I guess more genteel world of dressage, we haven’t done so well on that international scene as yet. Why is that, do you think?
Mary Hanna: That is because we have a great tradition of cross-country type riding, through the fact that we’re a country that’s well, been riding on the sheep’s back. I mean I learnt to ride for instance, on my parents’ property. We had sheep and cattle and we learned to ride because it was necessary to round up the stock and help on the farm. So it’s a tradition, the eventing develops out of that, you know, you’re galloping around the paddock after some stock and there’s a log there or something, so you jump it, and you develop that further into your sport. Dressage, on the other hand, is something that’s performed in a more confined area, traditionally. And so in Europe, because they don’t have the wide open spaces, they only have room for more confined type riding. They also of course have a very strong cavalry tradition, that’s where dressage actually comes from originally, from the training of horses for battle. And we don’t have any real cavalry tradition here that goes back centuries, as happens in Europe. And so they have a very big tradition of dressage, whereas ours is more cross-country riding. And so we’ve had to make many trips to Europe and purchasing the right kinds of horses and then building up our breeding stock in Australia to actually even have the right type of horse to ride and also to learn the techniques of doing this.
Amanda Smith: Well tell me a little bit more about your enjoyment of dressage, compared to three-day eventing. What does it offer you as a rider that’s different, or more challenging or satisfying?
Mary Hanna: Well I wouldn’t say it’s more challenging and more satisfying than three-day eventing, but the fact is, sooner or later the fences start to look larger as you get older. And I have to admit that one of the reasons I turned to dressage was that I felt that I really had got to a fairly high level with the three-day eventing but I didn’t think I was going to get any further and I’d become very interested in the dressage, because of the challenge of the training, It’s the actual daily routine of the training that’s really interesting. That’s so with eventing too, but it’s far more complex with training a dressage horse. The progress that you make can be minimal or infinitesimal some days, but then suddenly you’ll make a breakthrough with something and it’s a tremendous thrill to feel that you’ve really made a communication with the horse.
Coach: ...Yes, you’ve almost got that, you know, the trot’s quite well balanced, but there’s just not enough life in it. Sort of bounce it, no not faster, just spring her up and down a bit more vigorously from the surface...
Amanda Smith: Like all the sports we’re talking about today, the sport of dressage involves choreographed movement to music. But do dressage horses hear and respond to the music? And how is music worked in to the dressage competition? Chris Hector is a breeder of dressage horses, and editor of The Horse Magazine.
Chris Hector: I mean I think it’s sad because when we started doing dressage to music it was a case of selecting some particularly beautiful piece of music, and fitting the horse work around that piece of music so that it became expressive of the music. And then the level of competition became so high and the people who were riding it were so rich, that they all just videotaped their horses doing the best possible routine they could possibly do and then got tribes sitting on synthesisers going Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. So the music then became an adjunct to the movement of the freestyle. And the problem is that it all sounds like the sort of thing that you hear in the lift going up and down in a department store.
But I mean, some of the great riders on the scene like Anky van Grunsven who just won the World Cup again, and she uses distinctive music, like she did West Side Story in Rome, and she really does go and find some beautiful music. But get it straight: first of all they work out which of the movements that are going to get most points from the judges, and win the Olympics or win the World Cup, and then basically you fit the music around the horse. And if you’re riding the horse very well and it looks very light, it does look as if the horse is dancing to the music, but I do rather suspect that if you turned the sound off, the horse would keep doing exactly the same.
Amanda Smith: Chris Hector, who breeds horses in Australia for dressage competition. And if you’re interested to hear more about the choreographed horse, tune in to ‘Arts Talk ’ on Radio National this Sunday. Julie Copeland pays tribute to the horse in art, and speaks with the great French horsemaster, Bartabas. That’s Arts Talk, with Julie Copeland, this Sunday at three-thirty.
Now to women’s artistic gymnastics. In particular, the floor exercises. This is the event that’s set to music, and these days a lot of time, effort and resources go in to developing each gymnast’s floor routine.
Peggy Liddick coached the American gymnast, Shannon Miller, to two gold medals at the Atlanta Olympics. And now, as the National Coach for Australian women’s gymnastics, Peggy Liddick has overall responsibility for working out what sort of floor routine each of our elite gymnasts has, depending on their abilities, and body types.
Peggy Liddick: They’re either classical ballerinas or not, and if they’re not, that’s the biggest challenge, to find what sort of movements will actually look good with them, what sort of music they can move to and listen to. I mean some have a good ear for music, some have absolutely none. So it becomes the choreographer’s and the personal coach’s job to select music and mask the weakness that they have. I mean it’s easy when somebody’s really good, but if it’s not, that’s the challenge.
Amanda Smith: Well since you came from the United States a little over two years ago, Peggy, one of the things I think you’ve set out to do is to raise the standard and performance level of the Australian women’s floor exercise routines. How did you address what had probably been a weakness in Australian gymnastics?
Peggy Liddick: Well I wouldn’t think it’s a weakness, it was just a lack of resource basically. The first thing I did was bring in a professional choreographer. If we wanted to look professional and play the part, we had to have the right personnel.
Amanda Smith: And this Irena Milagradova?
Peggy Liddick: Exactly. She is a choreographer that I had - she’s actually from the former Soviet Union and I had met her in the States about seven years and had recruited her to work with me at Dynamo Gymnastics in Oklahoma City. She helped Shannon Miller with her choreography and get ready for the Olympic Games in Atlanta, and when I took the position here in Australia, I had brought her over six or seven times, and finally I asked the Olympic Committee for a grant to help her come over and stay in Australia for the next six months, to help prepare the Olympic team.
Amanda Smith: Given the constraints of what does have to be demonstrated technically by the gymnasts in the floor exercises, how creative and innovative can the gymnastics choreographer and the composer really be?
Peggy Liddick: Well the only limitations are the gymnast’s physical limitations really. You could have somebody like a Boginskaya who is the most beautiful, provocative, exotic dancer you could possibly dream of, but then you have somebody like Trudy McIntosh who is the most dynamic tumbler and a great little personality, but just doesn’t physically have the flexibility to move like a Boginskaya, so you wouldn’t go up the same road, you wouldn’t choose the same type of music or choreography. So Irena’s challenge has been to get Trudy to be the most entertaining and the most dynamic and the most music to her movements that she possibly can within her limitations. But still showing her strength, which is her power.
Amanda Smith: What about judges? How much are you trying to second-guess judges?
Peggy Liddick: That’s an art in itself, and I am a judge, I am an FIG judge, and I think that helps that I have the same knowledge. I mean they know that I know what they know. However, they’re the ones sitting there putting the score out, so yes, you want to make sure that audience is very much behind that gymnast, and you can’t help but, you know, 15,000 people screaming, you know, applauding, you aren’t going to be the judge to throw the bad score out. You know, you’re going to get tomato in the back of the head. So that’s what I’m counting on.
Amanda Smith: In gymnastics, both men and women compete in the floor exercises as well as the apparatus sections. But why is it that the women use music and costumes in the floor exercises whereas the men do not?
Peggy Liddick: Well I believe in men’s gymnastics they’re trying to show strength and control, like strength holds like say a planche or press-to-handstand type movements, where in women’s gymnastics, the whole idea is to show the artistry as well as to show the big contrast, and it’s just a different requirement, and I’m quite frankly glad that men’s gymnastics doesn’t have music.
Amanda Smith: Why?
Peggy Liddick: Oh well, I don’t want to see a bunch of feminine guys out there. I prefer the way men’s gymnastics is right now, I really respect their strength, and I respect the differences. That’s why I love our sport so much, is that we can be strong and weight to strength ratio is probably one of the highest you’ll ever see, but yet we can still be beautiful and be women. We aren’t trying to be men, and that’s what I really like about gymnastics.
Amanda Smith: Now, Peggy Liddick, the Australian women’s gymnastics coach, mentioned Trudy McIntosh. Trudy is 15 years old, a tiny bundle of strength and power. And she’s the only Australian to have ever had a gymnastic manoeuvre named after her. At the World Championships in China last year, Trudy was the first person to successfully accomplish a particular vault, which is now known as ‘The McIntosh’. Trudy’s also the current Australian champion in the floor exercises. She won the title in February this year, with a new routine, which she’ll also be performing at the Olympic Games. But how much input did Trudy have into the development of that routine?
Trudy McIntosh: Well we have a choreographer who makes up the dance, but we have our say too, like, if we don’t like that kind of move, we just say ‘No, I don’t think it would look good on me’, and we’re really good, we work together and it’s like a really good team, and the end result’s pretty good.
Amanda Smith: Well now you unveiled your new Waltzing Matilda routine at the National Championships in Sydney in February this year. How long did it take for that routine to come together?
Trudy McIntosh: Well we started on it just before Christmas I think, and we like have a choreographer that goes round to all the States, so you have a limited time like she was here for two weeks I think, and we spent heaps and heaps of time just patching little bits up bit by bit, and so it took a lot of time and training, and out of my training too, so like I had extra time, and then I competed in February, so it took a couple of months, and now just doing it over and over again it’s getting bit by bit better.
TRUDY McINTOSH TRAINING TO ‘Waltzing Matilda'
Amanda Smith: Trudy McIntosh’s Waltzing Matilda floor routine. And I have a feeling that we’re going to hear a lot of Aussie folk music from our competitors in the musical sports, come September.
Mark Calton is the senior gymnastics coach at the Victorian Institute of Sport. He’s also been working with Trudy McIntosh on this floor routine; he’s responsible for the acrobatic and tumbling components of the routine.
Mark Calton: Obviously the first part of when you decide on a new floor routine, then generally you’re going into it with some idea of the acrobatics or the tumbling component. In some routines, which are initially choreographed, take a little time to mature, it’s kind of like a red wine or something like that. It’s got to be left to settle for a little while, and then the girls become very comfortable with it, and they come up as very, very good performance pieces internationally.
Amanda Smith: I imagine though it’s a fine line between the gymnast becoming comfortable with the floor routine and actually getting a bit stale or bored with it, because they’re practising it pretty well every day, aren’t they?
Mark Calton: Yes, pretty much. You have to obviously get the perfection component in it and very stable and very accurate performance; you need to do a lot of repetitions on it. Usually they will get a new floor routine, probably every two years, for that reason. And it’s not only the athletes actually get stale with it, I mean within the say, the judging fraternity, or the international community, it becomes such a known thing that quite often it’s good to change it around and you kind of have a bit of a surprise on people, and it’s something new and refreshing and generally, if it’s well done, it gets very well received.
Amanda Smith: So OK, there’s the choreographer working with a gymnast and you as the coach. Who’s got the final say or final vision of how that routine ends up?
Mark Calton: Hopefully it’s a collaboration, but ultimately you have to get these tumbles in, and there’s not enough rest time, you have to change it to fit them in, because as a choreographer they’re very dance greedy. I mean they’ll pack it in with everything and put it fantastic, so basically all their time’s taken up with choreography. What we have to do is then prune it back down to allow the acrobatic component to fit in there, and it’s got to be a very good balance between the two, you can’t have it too heavy one way, otherwise there’s rules and regulations to say if it leans too far towards the tumbling then it’s almost deductible and the same way if there’s just too much dance component as well. So yes, it comes back to the coach to make those decisions.
Amanda Smith: Mark Calton, who’s the senior gymnastics coach at the Victorian Institute of Sport.
Well finally on The Sports Factor, to ice-skating, the ‘artistic’ sport of the Winter Olympics. And going back in time to the ice-dancing duet who took their sport to new levels of artistry and innovation. Jayne Torville and Christopher Dean won the gold medal for ice-dancing at the Sarajevo Winter Games in 1984, with technical and creative brilliance, and by bending the rules a bit, in their ‘Bolero’ routine. But how did that desire to innovate, and push at the edges of their sport, begin? Christopher Dean.
Christopher Dean: Well we started off as recreational skaters to begin with, not seeing it as an artistic form, or a choreographic form, but as a recreation and as a sport. As we started to skate together Jayne and I, and compete, we were encouraged to do our own things, to make steps up as we say (sounds very layman-like doesn’t it?). But basically that’s what we did. And that really was the development of movement at least, but without much thought behind it. There was a lot of movement to music but not necessarily any ideas backing it up.
Amanda Smith: Yes but there was also I suppose within the world of amateur competitive ice-skating, you were doing different things with the use of music. For example I guess we were used to, in ice-dancing, the kind of mish mash of music for example, you know, Swan Lake meets Theme from Rocky or something, and you were doing quite different things there.
Christopher Dean: I think that’s what we saw, that there was a lot of razorblading with music. We’d won the World Championships for the first time with a mish mash of music.
Amanda Smith: So, you had done that?
Christopher Dean: We had, oh absolutely. You go down that route, you follow what everybody’s doing to begin with, and that’s when you start to discover or think about it in your own way. And actually then, when you win the title you almost, you feel different. It’s funny, but you have a responsibility. And I think, as I was saying, as we progressed, we started to think about it more and we started to think about musical ideas, and instead of having this mish mash of music that you talk about, people write pieces of music with a complete theme in mind. And to actually go chopping it about destroys the piece of music as well.
The problem with skating, you’ve got a time limit, you’ve got a four minute timeframe, and not all pieces of music are written in that period of time. So that makes it difficult.
MUSIC - ‘Bolero’
Christopher Dean: We’d been listening to ‘Bolero’ as a warm-up piece of music, and nobody had used a single piece of music without any changes. But it doesn’t say in the schedules that you have to have changes of music, they say you can’t have more than three changes of music, which effectively means four different pieces, but changes. But we thought, Well, you don’t have to have it. And everybody starts off with a big bright beginning with a big bright ending. And we thought, Well, why do you have to do that? So ‘Bolero’ just suddenly jumped out at us. And we said ‘Well, this is totally different to what everybody’s using’; it’s a slow, consistent, repetitive piece of music, but in some way it’s hypnotic because it starts so small and grows to such a crescendo that it’s almost like a journey, it takes you along a road. We thought ‘Well this is a great idea; the only problem with ‘Bolero’ is that it’s 18 minutes long.’
Amanda Smith: Yes, so which four minutes did you extract from it?
Christopher Dean: Well we found a great arranger who actually did a lot of choral music. He dissected Ravel’s ‘Bolero’, because what we wanted, we still wanted the same effect over four minutes that Ravel had over 18 or 19 minutes, whichever version you might get. So he went away for several weeks and cursed us quite a lot, but came up with this wonderful arrangement. And incidentally that went to No.9 in the pop charts, Ravel’s ‘Bolero’.
The other choreographic side of it was that we actually couldn’t fit it into four minutes, it’s four-and-a-half minutes, so this is where the choreography started. We had to be inventive. In the rules it says that the skating will start to be timed from the minute the skater starts to skate. Not from when he moves, or anything else. We both started on our knees, to create a mood. So theoretically they can’t start to stopwatch until one of us places a blade on the ice. So we sort of had a prelude almost, to set the scene.
Amanda Smith: Very sneaky.
Christopher Dean: Yes, well that’s one of those grey areas that you talked of, you know, bending the rules.
MUSIC - ‘Bolero’
Amanda Smith: The still memorable version of ‘Bolero’ that won Torvill and Dean the gold medal in ice-dancing at the Winter Olympics back in 1984. And I was speaking there with one half of that partnership, Christopher Dean.
And that’s The Sports Factor for this week. Michael Shirrefs is the Producer; I’m Amanda Smith.
Guests on this program:
|
Debbie Muir National Coach of Australian Synchronised Swimming. |
|
Mary Hanna Australian Dressage rider. |
|
Chris Hector Breeder of horses in Australia for Dressage and Editor of 'The Horse Magazine'. |
|
Peggy Liddick National Coach for Australian Women's Gymnastics. |
|
Trudy McIntosh Australian Gymnast. |
|
Mark Calton Senior Gymnastics Coach at the Victorian Institute of Sport. |
|
Christopher Dean One half of the Ice-Dancing duet Torvill & Dean who, with Jayne Torvill, won the Gold Medal for Ice-Dancing at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics in 1984. |
Musical Items:
|
Bolero Time to Air: 0830-0900 Duration: 4'09" CD Title: Torvill & Dean - Face The Music - Music From Their Finest Performances Composer: Maurice Ravel (arrangement by Cy Payne) Label/CD No: Polygram TV/A&M Records - 8450652 Copyright: Polygram TV/A&M Records Ltd 1994 |
Presenter:
Amanda Smith
Producer:
Michael Shirrefs
©1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation