“So I made a mistake somewhere”: Averbukh about Medvedeva’s program, love for Tuktamysheva, Semenenko’s image and lack of knowledge

- Coaches like to tell how this or that production idea came to them, how long it took to select the music.

You often have to put programs quickly, without any prior preparation, and most of them ideally “sit down” on the athlete.

How do you do it?

Does your head work better in a stressful situation?

Or is it just a mature technology?

- A very interesting question and a very correct one.

When I skated by myself, we really, very carefully and for a long time hatched ideas for productions.

But practice shows that in most cases this is not a fully working story, not a guarantee of success.

Now things are going a little differently.

Everyone knows that I bet fast enough, but at the same time I have an absolute immersion.

When I visit this or that skater, for some time I watch how a person skates, talk to him, try to understand how he lives and what he wants.

And then, understanding this story, I plunge into the staging process.

Perhaps this is precisely why the programs are relevant - they reflect the state of the athlete, in which he is here and now.

- This season you have developed a very close cooperation with St. Petersburg.

- Yes.

In total, I put four programs for single skaters, and one more program for the second pair of Georgia.

- We are talking about free programs?

- Yes.

These are “Tango in a Madhouse” by Mikhail Kolyada, K-pop by Evgeny Semenenko, “Loneliness” by Igor Krutoy for Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Kerber by Jan Tiersen for Andrey Mozalev.

True, we worked with Mozalev in collaboration with Elena Maslennikova.

I specifically invited her so that there would be no repetitions and analogies with other productions.

- Was other music originally planned for Tuktamysheva?

- Yes.

And from the very beginning of the work, we both understood that the idea would not work.

That it is simply impossible to fully implement it on the ice.

But Lisa really wanted to try, and we made a program.

Relatively speaking, they closed the gestalt.

Even then I thought: “What if?”

But "suddenly", of course, did not happen.

As a result, Alexei Nikolaevich Mishin asked me to come to St. Petersburg and do something more suitable for Lisa.

At the same time, I cannot say that the work on the first program was wasted.

Rather, it was through her that Lisa came to what she is showing now.

I got rid of some choreographic contrived things, I became different.

- Tuktamysheva has always been distinguished by a very powerful, rolling style, but the current rules require very fast small movements from the skater.

How difficult is it to put together?

- On the one hand, the skater is obliged to comply with the rules, regardless of whether they are convenient for him or not.

On the other hand, we all know that in figure skating there is an unspoken table of ranks.

If you have crossed a certain line and got into the top, then the judges are ready to turn a blind eye to some things.

- Agree.

But there is no feeling that Lisa often balances on this edge?

And judges sometimes just don't know what to do with it.

- Maybe.

But at the same time, Lisa is a favorite figure skater of all, without exception, has a grandiose track record, high titles.

She is a girl with a very good head, very good language, education, great creativity.

Yes, it is more difficult for her than for others.

But the more valuable her victory.

- After the open rentals, I heard the opinion that the new program of Kolyada is a masterpiece, which will surely become stronger in perception than The White Raven, which you staged for Mikhail two years ago.

Do you share this point of view?

- It seems to me that Raven, after all, was perceived more powerfully.

Especially in the first season.

Although, when we staged this story, I didn't feel it.

Just put, as usual, to the music.

Then he left, and, after some time, Alexey Nikolaevich called me and said: “Come.

You made a good Christmas tree, now you need to hang toys on it.

By that time, to be honest, I had forgotten the program altogether.

And in the first seconds, when Kolyada began to roll the "Crow", he did not believe at all that I had done it - everything suddenly coincided so much.

Although Misha did not even jump, he just rode.

It was a perfect hit in the top ten.

- Didn't you ever think that "Tango in a Madhouse" should be rolled not by Mikhail, but by Evgeny Semenenko?

With its torn and at the same time very organic plasticity, crazy look…

- Not.

It was important to me that Semenenko chose music for himself.

This is so not “my” story that some of the audience even wrote after the rentals: they didn’t think that Averbukh was related to this program at all.

But I just liked it.

In general, I think that in my productions the main role is played by the one who is on the ice.

My story is more of a director's story: to finalize some ideas, suggest where to increase the pace, add saturation to the steps, where to stop and breathe.

Plus, I really wanted to bring Semenenko out of the image of the eternal Woland.

This is exactly the goal I set for myself.

- Why did Woland not please you?

— The program was good, but, in my opinion, too traditional.

Traditional hands, furrowed brows, and other attributes of the generally accepted interpretation of black magic.

And then I saw that Zhenya was really crazy about Korean rap.

This is his story, drive.

And by the way, there are a lot of his personal steps in the program.

For me, purely humanly, Semenenko generally opened up from a new side.

I realized, for example, that studying at a medical institute plays a very important role for him.

He told me all the trainings about some worms, and so selflessly that it even fascinated me.

I saw that a person is not obsessed with endless jumps and paths, that he has a great inner history.

And a great desire to develop not only on the ice, but also in another profession, the medical one.

- You yourself once said the phrase that when a person is not saturated with life experience, emotions, when he does not strive to develop and constantly learn something new, it quickly becomes clear that he simply has nothing to say to the viewer.

- Absolutely right.

- In productions, do you go from music or from the plot?

— Only from music.

In Ice Age, especially in the first seasons, I always tried to bring dramaturgy, idea, scene and other stories into the programs.

And when they started to invite me to put on sports programs, at first I also offered some kind of dramatic approaches a la “Ice Age”.

But I quickly realized that the finds that work well in the show do not work at all in sports.

They look stupid and primitive.

- But there was an absolutely brilliant story with Yulia Lipnitskaya's Schindler's List.

- The only thing that happened in that program is really cool - this is the finale.

The way Julia turned around.

And this look got into all the frames, forever went down in history.

Well, yes, I, as a choreographer, led everything to the fact that she would turn around in the end.

It also played into our hands that Yulia did not need any far-fetched suffering or endless wringing of hands, which the music seems to interpret.

She was constantly, as it were, above the plot.

And this rejection only increased the overall effect.

- Seven years ago, you told me in an interview: "Working with Lipnitskaya, in fact, I staged a program not for her, but for Eteri Tutberidze."

Often there are situations when you realize that you are putting on a program not for an athlete, but for a coach?

- Probably not.

Although I always ask that the mentor be there during the production and be a participant in the process.

It is better for him to immediately express all his comments than to fix the program later without me, and all the content will be destroyed.

- Another quote from your interview: "In terms of choreographic saturation, the programs of most skaters are in the Stone Age."

Yes, I said that, I remember it very well.

And he was talking about dancers.

Now ice dancing has grown significantly.

It can be seen that the coaches actively invite modern choreographers, use a lot of techniques, work with rhythm.

In single skating, a lot is still left.

And it's not about the directors.

It's just that each time you submit the program in one form, but in the process of rolling, one element first leaves it, then the second, the third, because a quadruple jump looms ahead and there is no time for choreographic frills.

Large smears remain, which, in principle, can also be removed, but the program will no longer be.

Therefore, I immediately try to find some fundamental points of support, which in a certain sense are capable of cementing the program.

But objectively, single skaters still lack this semantic load.

After all, not everyone is such a genius on the ice as Yuzuru Hanyu or the later Nathan Chen, who internally have such a sense of music that the production is of no fundamental importance to them.

The body itself knows how to move, where to squeeze.

And it turns out absolutely harmonious history.

- Is it a big problem to change the program in the middle of the season?

- Depending on who.

It is very difficult to do this in dances - this type, after all, requires a lot of rolling and more time.

A little easier, probably, in pair skating.

But single skaters could easily cope with this task.

In general, I would force single skaters to do at least two free programs per season.

It would be much more interesting.

- You are now working on a new free program for Mark Kondratyuk instead of the one that was staged by Nikita Mikhailov.

But after all, they themselves found themselves in the position of a person whose work was rejected by the coach.

Is this a painful moment for the director?

More like a worker.

I am absolutely fine with this.

If Zhenya Medvedeva had not refused to skate the January Stars program, which we put on with her in the Olympic season, the good and very famous Anna Karenina would not have appeared.

Perhaps, after the previous two successful seasons that we had with Zhenya, they expected something completely special from me, I don’t know.

The theme of Karenina, by the way, sounded from the very beginning, but somehow I immediately dismissed it, I thought that for a young 18-year-old then Zhenya, this was not a very suitable image.

As a result, the coaches returned to this idea and made the program so that everyone liked it.

So I made a mistake somewhere.

Although I still think that it was a little different.

That after two fantastic seasons, when Zhenya didn’t break anything, some failures suddenly appeared and someone had to be blamed for this.

Blame the program.

- By the way, I don’t consider Kondratyuk’s free program, which he showed at the rentals, to be unsuccessful.

Uncharacteristic for him - certainly.

But just such a production, as it seems to me, could develop it, take away that Mark, whom we know very well, and pull out some other qualities from him.

- I, frankly, am convinced, and I will repeat this many times: the director is an important story.

But, if an athlete skates cleanly, if everything is harmoniously arranged and does not hurt the eyes, then each program will sound, and sound great.

If we imagine that Mark would jump a quadruple lutz, then a quadruple flip, and everything else, then now we would talk about how wonderful he is in a new role, what great coaches that decided to take such a step, and so on.

- Does it matter to you exactly how the music is arranged in the program?

- Of course.

Ideally, you always want to rely on the whole composition.

The time when programs were built on the alternation of fast and slow parts, in my opinion, is gone.

- I can’t help but recall the Olympic free staging by Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov, which was criticized by many experts, including you.

- Thank God, Tamara Nikolaevna Moskvina did not take offense at me for this, but I really believed that this was not the way to arrange.

Romance and Time Forward!

- things that do not fit together at all for me, despite the fact that both works were written by the same composer.

Another question is that it was already pointless to rush about in the Olympic season, it was necessary to exclude any doubts and stand on your own.

Agree, this is also a position.

- Of your own programs that you have ever staged, were there many that you did not want to revise?

- In the "Ice Age", where there is a constantly staging stream, there will definitely be such.

I, among other things, mount the program, and try not to revise some numbers at all.

Because I know that I will definitely see something that could have been done in a completely different way.

Every time I have a very long conversation with myself: where I missed, what I didn’t finish.

Therefore, it is always very funny to read critical reviews.

Those who write would know how much much harsher criticism I have already dumped on my head myself.

- You don't have a choreographic education, do you?

- Unfortunately no.

Have you ever felt that you lack knowledge?

- In fact, yes, but such an understanding does not come immediately.

At first, impudent youthful courage prevails: why study something when I know everything myself?

I even forbade myself to watch any other productions, believing that I had to force myself to come up with this or that idea, which would definitely turn the world upside down.

Now, on the contrary, I watch a lot of things, I try to read and analyze a lot.

The wider the outlook, the more clearly you understand that all world art works in this way, based on what has been done before.

Of course, having an education, one could find these points of support much earlier.

Which would probably be better than coming to this at the cost of your own trial and error when you are over 45.

- Moskvina once said a wonderful phrase: “Experience is nothing more than a certain set of actions necessary to achieve a result.

Already you can afford to cut corners to find the shortest path to the goal.

- Absolutely brilliant.

On the other hand, everyone learns from their mistakes in one way or another.

In fact, I always looked with some envy at those who study at GITIS.

At one time, Lyudmila Pakhomova taught there (the first domestic Olympic champion in ice dancing.

), and my first coach Natalya Dubinskaya was her student.

She passed the exams on me - she put numbers, which she then showed to the teachers.

This, in fact, predetermined my sports fate: during one of the exams, Pakhomova noticed me and persuaded my mother to send me to dance.

Are you interested in the Montreal dance school that dominates the world now?

- As a viewer, I'm a little sad that now this school has practically captured all the world's dances.

Once upon a time, Natalia Linichuk captured them in the same way, and, in my opinion, there is nothing good in the fact that there is no clash of directions in dances.

On the other hand, as a professional, of course, I understand that this is not the problem of Patrice Lauzon, Roman Agenauer or Marie-France Dubreuil, that everyone is running to them.

When you cook many pairs at the same time, one of the main tasks is to make sure that they are all different.

I see that the Montreal coaches are trying: all the programs are very high quality, there are no passing ones, each of the leading duets is looking for its own approach.

I really see it and treat it with great respect.

- It turns out that the trouble with world dances is that Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband, who could well become a worthy counterweight to Montreal, stopped working together?

- It really was a disaster, and I talked about it when Marina and Igor were still collaborating, but it was already clear that things were moving towards a break.

In ice dancing, unfortunately, there is another problem that comes partly from ballroom dancing.

There you need to constantly take an infinite number of lessons from certain specialists, who then judge you.

— I heard a similar story about MGIMO.

If you haven’t scored a certain number of hours with certain tutors, you will never get in.

- Our dances, unfortunately, come to the same.

Therefore, two or three strong schools have formed in which this entire system is built.

They know for sure which “triples” count, which do not, which edges will count, which will not count.

Specific judges regularly come to these schools to correct the work of athletes, correct mistakes, and tell them what and how to do in order to get the proper level.

That is why lone coaches are forced to team up with each other.

Otherwise, they simply cannot survive.