Figure skating and music: from silent ice and snow competitions, to East and West movements and sounds

Qingfeng mountains, floating clouds and green water. Accompanied by the oriental rhythm of "Kung Fu Piano", Chinese players Wang Shiyue and Liu Xinyu wore "green mountains and green waters" and showed the Romance of Chinese Ice and Snow in the Ice Dance Free Dance Competition of the Figure Skating Team Competition held on the 7th.

Coincidentally, in this Winter Olympic Games, the Chinese style music that "the world can understand" has become the favorite choice of many figure skaters, Jin Boyang once again interpreted the sword and light shadow of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and Peng Cheng and Jin Yang presented "Night Feast" on ice... While Chinese culture has attracted global attention, the beauty of music in figure skating has also attracted attention again.

Music is regarded as the "soul" of figure skating program content. Contestants often choose the appropriate performance track according to their technical advantages, image characteristics, artistic style, etc., and use this as a basis for consideration to determine the competition costume and action arrangement. In the figure skating project, the fit with the music, the interpretation and expression of the music are the key to the final presentation effect.

Interestingly, figure skating was originally a "silent" sport. It wasn't until 1860 that American figure skater Hans Jackson made a new breakthrough by combining figure skating techniques with graceful waltz for the first time.

As figure skating joins the Olympic family, the role of music in it has become increasingly important.

In 1932, at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in the United States, an orchestra took to the ice rink and played the same piece in a loop, accompanying all the players. In the decades since, the contestants have gradually gained greater musical choices, but only to pure music without lyrics.

Since then, classical music has been a favorite repertoire category of figure skaters, such as Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, Chopin's Narrative No. 1 in G minor, And Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Among them, "Carmen" created by French composer Bige is the most popular figure skating soundtrack, which has been selected many times in women's singles, men's singles, pair skating, ice dance and other projects.

Looking back at the memories of the Winter Olympics, the first gold of Chinese figure skating is also inseparable from classical music.

At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, a soothing song from Albinoni's "Softboard in G Minor" was played, and the Chinese figure skating duo Shen Xue/Zhao Hongbo danced lightly on the ice, single jumping, lifting, four turns, throwing... The duo's full set of free skating performances was almost perfect, with a total score of 216.57 outstanding results to win the championship, which was the first figure skating gold medal in the Journey of the Chinese Winter Olympics, and the first pair skating gold medal won by non-European athletes in the 21st Winter Olympics.

In 2014, the figure skating soundtrack officially lifted the ban on vocals, and an increasingly diversified track appeared on the track of figure skating. Among them, the musical selection has become more prominent in the figure skating soundtrack with its dramatic lyrics, familiar rhythm and highly performative tension. Musicals such as "Phantom of the Opera", "Les Misérables", "Romeo and Juliet", "Moulin Rouge", "The Lion King", etc., are all popular songs for figure skating. According to the statistics of musical theater lovers, including "Sunset Boulevard" performed by Chinese player Zhu Yi in the women's singles short program competition of the team competition, more than 10 musical theater tracks will appear in the figure skating project of this Winter Olympics.

Looking back at history, the podium of the Figure Skating World Championships has long been monopolized by European and American players, in order to make the works understand and resonate with more judges and audiences, the figure skaters at that time also preferred to use European and American music. In recent years, music with oriental elements has also been brought to the international arena of figure skating by more and more Chinese players and Chinese players.

From the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, when Chinese celebrity Chen Lu emotionally interpreted the classic melody "Liang Zhu", to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the perfect combination of Chinese wind elements and the passion and vitality of ice and snow sports, in the field of figure skating, played the harmony of the East and the West, and also witnessed the fusion of Chinese cultural connotation and olympic spirit "beauty and coexistence". (Li Yimeng)