From experience, three things happen the moment that you let it slip that you used to be a figure skater: there is an incredulous pause, a sharp “Really?” and laughter. The order of the first two can change, but the exchange always ends in laughter.
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At the Olympics, figure skating is more exposed to the world than ever in all of its tacky, high-def glory. The garish costumes, the canned music, the kiss-and-cry routine as skaters wait for their scores — it’s easy to make fun. I can still see the Belgian skater Kevin van der Perren’s skeleton costume without closing my eyes. (When will that stop?) But as an amateur who had professional coaching, I loved being part of that world, or what it once represented.
Figure skating exists in a murky place — it’s tempting to find parallels to dance. Both forms feature movement in space and time set to music, and some skaters even study ballet. Still, when a certain recurring question crops up — is figure skating a sport or an art — I’m reminded of the jokes, and the answer is clear: it’s a sport with delusions of grandeur.
There was a time when skaters who embodied lyricism, like the 1960s star Peggy Fleming or even the more recent Sasha Cohen, rose to the top. Though routines have the potential for putting expression into steps, it’s increasingly unusual that artistry can emerge beyond sheer mechanics. It can come close. On Thursday night at the Vancouver Olympics, the women’s competition drew to a close on an elegant note as Kim Yu-na, a South Korean skater capable of all that and more, was awarded the gold. (On Sunday the top skaters will perform in an exhibition.)
During the competition Ms. Kim transformed herself into two characters: a James Bond flirt, aiming an invisible gun at the audience in her short program, and a free spirit skating to Gershwin’s Concerto in F with relaxed aplomb in her long program. Moving with a steady swiftness, yet seeming to melt into the music at every opportunity — not easy in an ice rink, where musical notes can sound like rain hitting tin — Ms. Kim abandoned herself to speed and poise to attain a state of grace.
In recent years the judging process has contributed greatly to impeding artistic development. Figure skating has long had a problematic scoring system; after the vote-trading scandal of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, when a Russian couple was awarded a higher score than the Canadians who had skated more soundly, the International Skating Union changed the judging procedure.
Now skaters accrue points according to the difficulty of technical moves; judges are a click away from slow-motion replay allowing them to review, say, the amount of time a skater holds a spiral or the landing position on a jump. If standards are not met, penalties ensue. Each step is an opportunity to accumulate more points.
In this environment there’s no such thing as spontaneity, which is the spice of art; rather, skating is more a competition than ever.
Another sad result of the new system is that techniques that score well don’t necessarily encourage innovative choreography, unless a skater is as skilled as Ms. Kim. As skaters go through the motions of their programs, it’s easy to imagine their frantic thoughts: “Double axel, double toe, double loop — check, check, check. Now smile.”
Instead of emphasizing technical ability, which strips the form of its soul, skating should take a page from the American skater Johnny Weir. True, he ended up in sixth place — hurt by a spin mishap in his long program — but otherwise skated beautifully. Skaters need more of the bravery he shows.
Mr. Weir is unusual, and not because of his flamboyance — he famously garnishes his costumes with feathers and tassels, and his skate guards are encrusted with rhinestones — but because he approaches skating from a choreographic sensibility. As so many skaters bend to the system, Mr. Weir refuses to become a slave to its rules, even if that means coming in sixth.
The sport lost an edge when compulsory or school figures, including basic figure eights, were eliminated from competition in 1990. (They have been replaced by a different set of tests called Moves in the Field, which are similar in some respects, but not part of competition.) Compulsory figures may have been monotonous for most to watch — part of their demise had to do with their inability to draw television viewers — but having to trace patterns onto the ice, embellishing them with brackets and loops, fostered control, precision and agility.