“Looked like an Italian family”: Rubleva - about working on productions with her husband, new dances and overall figure skaters

— For many years I have been trying to understand what Russian dance duets lack in order to win.

Why, with all their technicality and efficiency, are they often inferior to foreign rivals even in visual comparison?

- Here, probably, we need to build on the fact that ice dancing is a matter of taste.

Someone likes it to be loud, bright, catchy, pretentious, and this, too, you see, can bring results.

— I agree.

But at the same time, the skating of Vasilisa Kaganovskaya and Valery Angelopol, who were first brought to the adult level by Anzhelika Krylova, as well as Anna Shcherbakova and Yegor Goncharov, who won the junior national championship in Perm under your leadership, made the strongest impression on me personally this season.

Purely intuitively, there is a feeling that they are different.

And that it's not just a well-delivered program.

— A good program is an important aspect.

But in general, we in our coaching team are striving for exactly what you said.

We talk a lot about this.

Our big plus, it seems to me, is that we have a large coaching team, and we all look in the same direction.

We think the same way, we value things the same way.

We have a wonderful choreographer Katya Vinogradova, with whom we have been working for a very long time.

Before each training camp, we sit down together and discuss in detail what we will work on, what we want to achieve.

This year, for example, they talked about the fact that we don't want to give Anya and Egor the classics that everyone is tired of, we don't want anything folklore, as was the case last year.

We want something that can captivate the guys, completely capture them.

- And there were "Chess"?

- I would not talk about any particular program.

We began to work very hard on contact, on feeling and understanding ourselves, on acting skills.

Katya's dad, a very good actor Vladimir Vinogradov, once came to our skating rink.

He watched our practice and said that he was very pleased to see the work on the ice, which is carried out not just through sports, but through the awareness of what you are doing and how you are doing it.

- So I'm trying to understand what's the matter: in the uniqueness of the athletes themselves or the coaching approach to the process as a whole?

“It's always a combination of factors.

The athlete must be not just talented, but "hearing", ready to take the position of a coach and not afraid to look a little deeper into himself, into his own understanding of dance.

But the coach must also understand what result he wants to see, and what to get away from.

What do you want to get away from?

- From movement for the sake of movement, when the athlete is given the task of simply performing a certain set of elements and gestures.

I wanted to ensure that my skaters understand what exactly they want to show, explain and convey to the audience with their every movement.

To maximize the interaction between partners and at the same time as natural as possible.

- In other words, to have a dance on the ice, and not a theater?

- But why?

"Chess" is also quite a theatrical story.

It's all about execution.

If we compare what is happening in dance now, and what was before, through all the top programs of recent years, the word “modern” goes in red line.

After all, all modern art in the broadest sense of the word - ballet, theater, dancing on the floor, on ice, choreography in general - just galloped forward with leaps and bounds.

You need to be able to perfectly feel your body, be able to control it, convey all the nuances of emotions without falling out of music and dramaturgy.

This is a completely different story, even in comparison with the times when I skated by myself.

“Look at the paradox that turns out: coaches who have been using well-established technologies in their work for decades are able to achieve a certain level of results with their athletes very quickly.

But at the same time, they actually create around themselves more and more ossified shell, to go beyond which with age it becomes simply scary.

- Trying something new is always somewhat scary, but here everyone must decide for himself whether he is ready to take risks.

At one time, having already become a coach, I thought a lot: what is the strength of the Montreal school?

I came to the conclusion that just in this: they are not afraid to take risks.

In particular, in transferring modern choreography from parquet to ice.

Do you mean the famous Vogue of Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron?

- Not only.

Now there are thousands of different directions: dance whatever you want.

I read somewhere that Marie-France Dubreuil came up with the idea for a French Vogue-style short program, and Gabriela and Guillaume supported it.

It seems to me that when people do this, especially in the Olympic season, this is a strong move.

On the other hand, if you are great at skating, well coordinated, why not take it?

But the main thing for me in skating Papadakis and Sizeron is not even that.

And the fact that they thoroughly understand what and why they are doing on the ice.

This is what I strive for when working with my athletes.

- If Shcherbakova and Goncharov, with the same quality of skating, remained second in Perm, would it upset you?

- I will not dissemble: we went to the championship of Russia to fight for first place, realizing that we have very strong rivals who have a certain weight, name.

Anya and Yegor won all their starts this season, but they did not meet with all their rivals before the performance in Perm.

At the same time, I had no ambitions to prove something to anyone.

Still, winning the Russian championship is not the limit of our coaching dreams, but only a certain stage of work.

And the result just shows how well we did this job.

- By you, for sure, the scandalous discussions of refereeing in single skating, which began with the filing of Evgeni Plushenko, did not pass.

Are you satisfied with the way the judges worked in Perm regarding your duets?

- In this championship - yes.

If I have certain questions, and this, of course, happens, after all, no one has canceled the human factor in our sport, I always try to find out after the competition what this or that referee was guided by.

I ask questions to the technical team, line judges, that is, I try to get some kind of feedback in order to understand what to work on.

- And if you do not agree with the opinion heard?

“I never say this.

What is the reason?

If I address a person, I do it to hear his opinion, and not to argue which of us is right.

He's the one at the controls, not me.

So, my task is to do everything possible so that he likes my athletes.

I myself once passed the exam for a technical specialist, from time to time I judge Russian tournaments and I know that people are also dissatisfied with my grades.

But this is normal, especially in dancing.

If people are ready to start a dialogue and contact me with some questions, I am always ready to explain why I gave this or that rating.

- What is sitting at the control panel from a psychological point of view?

- It's not easy for me.

As someone who once skated himself and knows how painful it can be to face an unfair decision, I am very afraid of allowing such an injustice to anyone.

- In this regard, is it difficult to find a common language with those who have not skated professionally themselves?

- It can be difficult.

Despite the fact that I myself am absolutely normal about criticism, sometimes other people's formulations jar.

I would like the judges, saying some things, to be more delicate in relation to athletes and coaches.

Never underestimate the work of others.

• From left to right: Ekaterina Rubleva, Anna Shcherbakova, Yegor Goncharov, Sergei Plishkin and Ivan Shefer

- What is the most difficult thing in work when you are on the other side of the board as a coach?

- Don't doubt yourself.

I am also very afraid of losing the ability to evaluate my work as objectively and impartially as possible.

In this regard, however, it is somewhat easier for us when internal throwing begins, since there is a team around.

- But throwing still happens?

- Usually we don’t agree on some things with my husband (Sergey Plishkin. -

).

I sometimes start getting into the staging process, explaining that this or that element needs to be placed not here, but in some other place.

But we also have Ivan Alexandrovich (Shefer. -

), who does an excellent job with both of us.

It’s really impossible to quarrel with Sergei, but at first, our relationship with him, when the productions were going on, looked just like an Italian family.

Everything was very emotional, noisy, the children loved to look at it.

Probably, they thought that at home Sergey and I beat the plates against each other's heads.

- In the meantime, you also managed to have a child.

- After Shcherbakova and Goncharov won the Russian championship, I received a joking message from a colleague, and a man, that the birth of a child was clearly a plus for me, and I would also have to try.

The period when I was expecting a son was generally very beneficial for everyone.

I became calmer, for the most part I sat on the sidelines, not interfering in the process, in connection with which Sergey began to feel much more confident as a director.

- Why, after the end of your own career, did you and Ivan Shefer not want to stay in the brigade of Irina Zhuk and Alexander Svinin?

- We were immensely grateful to our coaches for the opportunity to start working under their wing, and indeed for everything that they gave us in sports.

In the same way, I will always be grateful to Elena Kustarova and Svetlana Alekseeva, where Ivan and I skated before we switched to Pork and Zhuk.

Thanks to them we learned a lot in dancing.

After the end of our own career, by the way, we accepted the offer of Ira and Sasha to stay in the team and work with very small pairs, we enjoyed this work very much, but we quickly became “cramped” on the same ice.

There were some own ideas that are not always possible to implement, working under the guidance of more experienced professionals.

There was also a financial aspect.

By that time, Ivan had already had a child, he had to support his family, and you won’t earn much on a small group.

So we sat down with our coaches, talked and made a decision.

Was it scary to go on your own?

- Very.

Moreover, no one gave us any guarantees, and we could only rely on ourselves.

We agreed to work with the director of the school in Sokolniki, Svetlana Petrovna Lyubushina.

We had a completely unbridled excitement and a desire to achieve something, but it was the end of August - the worst time to start somehow asserting ourselves.

All the children who came to watch in the summer have already gone to other groups, so Ivan and I got those who were not taken anywhere.

The contrast compared to the children with whom we worked with Svinin and Zhuk was so strong that I once said to Ivan in desperation: they say, I could never even think that I would start independent coaching with this.

Nevertheless, by the end of the winter, we had several quite working duets that performed at competitions and were not even the last ones there.

- When Elena Kustarova and Oleg Ovsyannikov were third in the Olympic selection in 1993, I remember how Tatyana Tarasova said: "In one performance, they lost in dancing all their lives."

Was your defeat in St. Petersburg in 2009 also perceived as the end of your life?

- Yes.

The moment of despair was very strong for me then.

Formally, we continued to prepare for the European Championships as substitutes, we sat at the base in Novogorsk, from time to time some bosses came there to look at us, but one day I just said: “Van, let's leave?”.

I really felt then that if we do not get out of this situation for at least a few days, some completely irreparable things may happen.

- Have you gone?

Yes, five days at sea.

The three of us.

Me, Vanya and his wife.

But even then, when we had already officially completed our careers, for some time I could not watch the competition.

All this swirled in my head for a very long time.

What do you feel now, talking about that period?

- Now I sometimes think that all the difficult situations that happened in my own life definitely made me stronger.

So, if you ask if I want to rewind history and change something in my life, no, I don’t.

- That is, you never regretted that you ended your career so early?

- I would love to ride for a few more years if I had such an opportunity, but Ivan Alexandrovich was already so immersed in family life that it was unrealistic to pull him out of there.

And with another partner, I simply could not imagine myself.

- You have already twice, albeit jokingly, called Schaefer by his first name and patronymic.

Does this mean that he is informally the head of your coaching team?

- It comes from sports.

I knocked on the door of the men's locker room before going on the ice and called: "Ivan Aleksandrovich ..." Everyone was very amused then.

As for leadership, formally I am considered the first coach in our team, Schaefer is the second, but we discuss and make most decisions collectively, with our entire staff.

- In ice dancing, there is still an opinion that a couple should skate for many years before they begin to achieve the first significant results.

“I think it’s always a very individual story.

When Zhenya Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissard appeared in our group, they, I remember, got into a pair and immediately rode as if they had been skating together all their lives.

The same story with Shcherbakova and Goncharov.

Yegor had many partners, but as soon as he took Anya by the hand at the very first training session, it became obvious that these two found each other.

For both of them it is important to understand each other purely humanly, to trust each other, to support.

• Anna Shcherbakova and Yegor Goncharov

• © Perm Figure Skating Federation

- But what about the talk that in dancing almost everyone is able to fight, barely leaving the ice?

- It is not true.

- Tell me more that you do not know such examples.

Why not?

I know.

Heard a lot of things, saw a lot of things with my own eyes.

But it seems to me that such relationships greatly complicate the joint work.

The ideal option is when athletes go on the ice with the feeling that they are the only ones in the world who have each other.

And for this you need to be sure of what I have already said.

In support, in understanding, in accepting a person as he is.

Perhaps the whole point is that I myself grew up in just such a pair, and therefore I argue in this way.

- Of those who are now speaking on the other side of the border, who could be singled out?

- Can not answer.

Some people like something, others like something.

I really look forward to the World Cup, I want to see everyone together in the same competition.

For me, it will be very interesting.

- You are not alarmed by the fact that even at the highest level dancers begin to appear rather large in physique partners who do not experience any complexes about their own dimensions, and this trend will even affect Russia?

Well, it's definitely not about our country.

We still have a too well-established understanding that a partner should be thin, resonant and transparent.

This is a clear subconscious position, which, I think, cannot be eradicated by anything.

- Did you yourself suffer a lot because of this at one time?

“I wouldn't say.

Although there was a moment when I negotiated with myself about some things with great difficulty.

Ivan Alexandrovich, when we skated with him, was always dry, lean, and my muscle mass grew very quickly.

Even off-ice work in connection with this had to be severely limited.

I remember Alexander Vasilyevich (Svinin. -

) once said to me: “Katya, you should dry off, go run.”

Then he took me by the thigh, felt the muscle and thoughtfully said: “No, we probably won’t run anymore ...”

But when I finished skating, the extra muscles quickly fell asleep, and only 4 kg immediately took off.

Another question is that now the coach has to be as delicate as possible in these matters.

Not so long ago, we talked about this topic with a psychologist, and she said that 95% of those who turn to her are people with an eating disorder.

Do you weigh your athletes?

Yes, twice a week, on Monday and Friday.

But even if I see figures that do not suit me, I always find a way to say it in a way that does not humiliate a person.

Moreover, this never becomes a cause for scandal in our group.

If such a scheme worked with us, now it does not bring the desired result.

The coach should be for his ward, first of all, a partner.

- Are you aware that the skaters, having achieved their first successes, may want to leave you and Ivan for more eminent specialists simply for a higher judicial resource?

— This has happened in our practice more than once.

And in all variants.

Someone put us on notice in advance, because sometimes people are forced to leave by circumstances.

Someone left quite ugly.

Dancing on ice is generally a very ambiguous story in terms of human relationships, ornate.

Personally, I believe that every coach sooner or later finds "his" athlete.

And vice versa.

Therefore, situations like this do not unsettle me.

If all coaches, all specialists work in the same direction and with maximum efficiency, the result cannot but come.