Daniil Gleikhengauz: “Because of Spotify and iTunes are not working in Russia now, I’m fraught with the loss of my job. It’s become much harder to find music.”
Daniil Gleikhengauz told about he got to the group of Eteri Tutberidze and how he selects music for the future performances.
source: radio Europa Plus, text version sports.ru/Championat.com
Daniil Gleikhengauz: It was 2014. I have already started coaching; at that time, I was still skating in ice shows with Ilia Averbukh. I worked with him for two or three years, and at that moment he was working with Yulia Lipnitskaya, who skated with Eteri. It was just the Olympics in Sochi, where she won gold in the team.
And Eteri turned to Ilia: there were changes in her team; she needed a new person who would be responsible for gliding. It wasn’t about doing programs then. She needed a person who would teach to skate. She turned to Ilia, and at that moment I was in contact with him; he advised me.
Everything was much simpler, and much less was required of me than now. My task was to improve the skating skills of the athletes. I came to the beginning of training, and we worked on gliding for 30 minutes. After that, of course, I stayed on the ice for the entire training session, but I was still shy. I was shy to make comments to top athletes, some of whom were even older than me. Nine years have passed—I can’t even believe it—and the progress is obvious.
Before I came to Eteri, I had already choreographed programs. I was confident in myself that I was a choreographer, but they tell me that I just need to work on skating. But I found a common language with the guys and started to offer ideas to both them and Eteri. And at some point, she decided that it was something interesting that should be tried. There were cancellations, and then I gradually gained trust.
Daniil Gleikhengauz told how the training process is built in the group of Eteri Tutberidze.
Daniil Gleikhengauz: Eteri Georgievna Tutberidze does not like to get up early. She made her own schedule. Our first practice starts at 11:30. The athletes came earlier; they come at 10 a.m. for warm-up and choreography. But I have the opportunity to arrive at 11:30, so I get enough sleep.
Latest workout? 6-7 p.m. When we are at the training camp in the summer and choreograph most of our programs for the season, we spend the whole working day from 11:30 to 20:00. And then, at 21:00, we start working on new programs and can continue until 1 a.m.
How do you come up with ideas for programs? On the go or outside of training, at home?
Daniil Gleikhengauz: It’s a year-round process. Thoughts, ideas, and music can come at any moment. For example, you listen to the radio, hear a cool track, and something inspires you. I also do it during flights or at home. I love to come up with ideas on vacations. It’s great when you sit on the beach in some hot country and start looking for new music and ideas on the Internet.
And now I am suffering; they have complicated the task of finding new music as much as possible for me.
More Russian tracks appear, probably?
Daniil Gleikhengauz: That doesn’t help me. It’s become harder to find tracks.
You can subscribe to Spotify in another country.
Daniil Gleikhengauz: Yes, I need to do it. Because I used everything—both Spotify and iTunes.
Yes, I stopped listening to music because of this.
Daniil Gleikhengauz: And I’m fraught with the loss of my job.
Where are you looking for music now?
Daniil Gleikhengauz: In complicated ways. I go, for example, to the top 100 Billboard, and from there, I go further. It’s easier with the soundtracks and the neoclassical music. I watched the movie; it doesn’t matter whether they show it or not; now you can find everything, and from there I’m already looking for a soundtrack; it’s all available.
The issue is that, for example, in iTunes, everything new pops up in different categories, which reduces the search time. The main thing is to understand what you are looking for. When you do it from scratch, you do not understand what kind of request you need or what you want to find.
I found a lot of music for programs that no one had heard at all. This is the “thing” of my choreographing activity. Of course, I also take “Carmen” or “Swan Lake”, but when I find something that has never been heard in figure skating, this has its own trick.
I also experimented; one of my first well-known programs was Alina Zagitova’s Olympic short program. It was Black Swan, but I combined the classics with the soundtrack from Moonlight. Do you remember this very controversial movie? There was a very cool piece that sounded like Swan Lake to me.
Why is the same music often played at competitions?
Daniil Gleikhengauz: In a way, this is a trend. For example, the movie “Rocketman” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” was out; that’s it, the simplest option, and everyone took it. Or “La La Land” came out, and we had 20 people skate it in one season.
Related topics: Daniil Gleichengauz, Eteri Tutberidze
Este hombre piensa que realmente es un buen coreógrafo, él no se ha dado cuenta que el programa largo de Anna, el programa corto de Sasha y el programa de Daría eran iguales