#MUSICALITY TESSA VIRTUE FREE#
For this longtimer, the nostalgia sometimes surged beyond Virtue and Moir’s career - “Fix You” also recalling Maia and Alex Shibutani’s tremendously successful free dance to same in 2015-16, “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue’s underrated Great Gatsby free dance of the year before. A lively Motown group routine not only highlights Virtue’s rhythmic virtuosity and Moir’s insanely contagious joy in performing, but also can’t help but remind the viewer of one of the team’s rare purely fun exhibition programs, 2012’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and Virtue’s frequent citing of Marvin Gaye as a favorite. In the Rolling Stones-scored group introduction, they recreate the opening steps and midline step sequence of their 2018 2x-Olympic gold-winning “Sympathy for the Devil” Latin short dance they close the show with a deeply nostalgic tour through major free dances past in “Fix You.” Within that 1920s club number, “Sway” paraphrases their vintage-themed short dances from 2010-14 in the routine overall, one could also squint and find an allusion or two to their Charleston original dance from 2008-09.Īnd some choices are simply evocative for longtime fans. This show asks its strongest skaters to work, and none moreso than Virtue and Moir.Ĭertainly, beyond their intricate new solo to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” created by rising choreographer and National Ballet of Canada principal Guillaume Côté, the effort is clearest in the incorporation of past bits of competitive choreo throughout the show. (Indeed, when you enlist Jeremy Abbott and Carolina Kostner, alongside Canadian tour mainstay Patrick Chan, to your cast, you’re prioritizing musicality and bladework.) After a standard lineup of solo routines, Rock the Rink shifts into a succession of group outings like that described above, and it’s here that we journey through a riotous range of genres, each demanding that the cast get comfortable with some level of partnering.
This is the vision of ice dance upon which Rock the Rink - even with a cast mostly comprising singles and pair skaters - was built. Such sensitivity to and expression of rhythm is a hallmark of her skating overall, the factor that’s allowed such tremendous diversity in her body of work with lifetime partner Scott Moir - himself, of course, an exceptionally gifted mover. Virtue isn’t merely on the beat she embodies it, moving through it and it through her. And this is too much an understatement of what Virtue demonstrates. This is a rhythmically capable cast snapping to a beat is, to be facile, a snap. There are open-mouthed stares and chair swivels and then there is Tessa Virtue, casually snapping her fingers like tablemate Kaetlyn Osmond, but doing something beyond keeping time. While world champion Carolina Kostner ably vamps through “Why Don’t You Do Right,” the remaining cast sit back as engaged spectators. During a 1920s jazz club-themed group number at the Laval, Quebec, stop of Rock the Rink, the skating show set to wrap its tour of Canada this Saturday, my attention was caught by something out of the spotlight.
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