The Three Exodus
Anna Pavlova is not the first one who used Exodus as floor music, and not the last.
Nicole Pechanec, a Stanford gymnast who used to compete for Czech Republic used the music first, in 2007. The dance was fluid and decent, but lacks depth compared to Pavlova.
Anna’s routine is widely loved for a lot of reasons. The choreography is exquisite and subtle. The music cut has an emotional climax built in, and the most important part, Anna’s variety of skills that was in every way an antithesis of the 2008 code — the very pretty front layout full to front stepout, a 1996 pass; the full twisting Shushunova, a 90s Khorkina signature skill now rated a B; the unique back attitude turn with leg held up. Everything considered, this routine is a gold medal winning 1996 floor routine. Anna made this piece of music more than itself, more grandiose, more distilled with real feelings, and ultimately the masterpiece of 2008 Olympics. Even if Nicole used the music first in the international scene, Anna owned the music.
Jiang Tong’s floor routine made everyone upset, including me, and it is sort of ironic because Jiang probably had this routine before Anna. The two bloggers live covering the Bercy World Cup(the all around and the gymnastics examinor) both failed to point out that Jiang’s floor music was identical as Pavlova’s masterpiece (it’s funny how fast people forget about things).
I shall say that Jiang Tong is the least flexible gymnast China has ever produced, possibly the only one who can’t do a switch ring on beam in the entire Chinese senior and junior team. Coach Liu has had anomaly like Bai Chunyue and Wang Tiantian before, but this girl is a new territory — the American gymnast type, somewhat powerful but zero flexibility. The Chinese program relies solely on flexibility to build up D scores, and it will be interesting to see where Jiang Tong is going to end up being. Needless to say, this music really, really has to go.
But here is the point I want to make in this post: why are music choice so homogeneous in current WAG floor exercises? Let’s count, how many gymnasts are using different cuts of the ratatouille music? Even though Anna’s piece is stunning, the music itself is not unique, hence the different versions of it to begin with. Much like figure skating, floor music is not progressing with the music industry whatsoever. Popular Movie OST, classic music, ethnic ballads (abused by the Romanian team) are the only three major choices. I look forward to seeing a floor routine to an edgy Tortoise song or a break dance piece.
Nevertheless, here I present the three routines with groundbreaking modern music, all from European gymnasts:
@1 year ago#Nicole Pechanec #Anna Pavlova #Jiang Tong #Youna Dufournet #Ariella Kaislin #Gaelle Mys
