At least 20 friends from Cirque told me I would, and they tend to be very critical of their own product.
TOTEM is great. Weird, but great.
Normally I go to see the acrobatics. The more flips and twists, the better.
This show does not have as much acrobatics as usual. But I still loved it. Our group, mostly women’s judges from World Championships, enjoyed a backstage tour.
Themes: evolution, physics, indigenous peoples … Totem has plenty of monkeys. … I assume that’s Darwin juggling flourescent balls in the big plexiglass cone. (Why didn’t I think of that act! I’d be rich.)
The hoop dancer, Nakotah LaRance, is fantastic. He does a traditional act straight up. It’s awesome.
In another act, First Nations peoples are on roller skates! … And it’s intensely sensual. Only Cirque would conceive something like this.
Sometimes the shocking costumes are a distraction. But they really work well in this show.
Not shown there is the best of all, the Crystal Man, a human disco ball. That suit has 4,500 mirrors, costing $15,000. And they have 3 back stage!
The music is wonderful: Bollywood, First Nations drumming, ambient, world beat, didgeridoo, throat singing, even flamenco.
Last shout out. Everyone loves one comic character, an oddball Italian tourist. (Or something.) That guy is hilarious, perhaps my favourite Cirque clown yet.
If you get the chance, see it. TOTEM is an astonishingly mature show for one so new. I doubt they’ll tinker with it much. It works.
Disclosure: Cirque du Soleil paid for my ticket. But I rave about their shows even when I’m buying. The disclosure is that I love CdS. I’m a bloody fan boy. You can’t trust my opinion.
In the thrilling second last routine at the World Championships in Rotterdam, Epke Zonderland went all out to win GOLD in his home nation. He added the Gaylord 2, a skill named after 1984 Olympian Mitch Gaylord (VIDEO).
Or did he?
Geoffrey Taucer of the Apex Technical Corner blog points out that the skill must be done with straight legs for the E value.
Leave a comment if you can confirm. And we still need a judges breakdown of the gold medal routine from Zhang Chenglong, the only Chinese highbar routine I’ve liked since Tong Fei.
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UPDATE: Wsvanwijk sends a link to a Code update from FIG (PDF) dated March 2008 referring to the Gaylord 2 in tucked position as being an E, same value as in piked position.
That’s odd. I’ll send off this post to a couple of FIG judges to see if they can confirm.
One FIG judge got back to me. Definitely a D-part, he tells.
The important World Championships, qualifying to Olympics 2012.
Tokyo, in October.
This will be a huge event there, Uchimura planning to become the first gymnast to win 3 World Championships in series.
The official website, just launched, has a very cool video, if you can get it to load. Appropriately, the finale is Uchimura sticking Vault. His trademark.
Leave a comment if you have exact dates. The website is carefully vague. … Oct. 8-16th, has been posted in a couple of places.
… He Kexin’s floor routine from team qualifications is a delight to watch! I am shocked! I knew the girl could swing bars but I had no idea she was any real use on the other events. But sure enough, she went up in qualifications and delivered a very clean routine! …
For most of my lifetime the best gymnasts were from the Soviet Union. The best coaches. … Then the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the diaspora of Soviet coaches around the world.
Rodionenko, for example, went to Western Australia. Then Canada. Then was convinced to return home, to help rebuild the Russian gymnastics program.
… I’m thinking Andrei is happy this one is over.
He hired back Alexander Alexandrov as Women’s National Coach. Here’s a very interesting interview from the past.
Epke Zonderland brought the house down with this extreme routine in his home nation, Netherlands. I’d not heard that he’d even trained the Gaylord 2 this week, never mind putting it in for finals.
In the end, almost everyone I spoke with thought this a surprisingly excellent Worlds. Fantastic Gymnastics. That includes Hardy Fink, who’s been at more WCs than anyone else.
It’s easy to find fault. Point out terrible form, especially twisting. … Bad technique. Cheap difficulty.
But there were far more positives than negatives.
How many times did I saw “WOW” out loud? … Hundreds. Hundreds of times. For gymnasts from all over the world.
Uematsu Koji during the H Bar final. This is fight. This is gymnastics at the highest level. One of the best routines I saw in Rotterdam. And he fell.
We’re seeing some positions that don’t make divers wince. (As much.)
And Ring leaps that wouldn’t be out of place in Rhythmic.
Women’s Vault is shockingly weak compared with Men’s Vault. But I’d compete Alica against guys and win more often than not. She’s excellent. … Look at the form in the preflight of Yurchenko. That’s cleaner than Shewfelt.
Though there’s virtually no reward for being artistic in Artistic gymnastics these days, we still have many wonderfully artistic gymnasts, including Longines winnersTanaka and Boy.
I’m starting to like Beam again. The girls are better than ever before in history. But rules must be changed so that they are not allowed to pause between every skill. If that happened we’d see better routines than the late 1980s, for sure.
Men’s Horizontal Bar is my least favourite apparatus, the rules idiotic right now. But you can’t watch these fearless guys trying to connect Kovacs skills without admiration. It’s not fun to miss. No coach is going to slow you down.
Where’s that Epke Horizontal Bar finals video? One of the extreme routines of all time. Wow.
Women’s Artistic Gymnastics, all-around, is nearly impossible in 2010. You can do 4 long, hard routines. But how can you train enough of them to be “ready” without getting injured.
Mustafina and Bross are incredible. So tough, durable and focused. We will never see very many young women achieve this level.
And Beth Tweddle. You can’t say enough about her. To my mind she’s an average international genetic talent, who persisted to become multiple World Champion by a supernatural psychological skill set.
Ask a male gymnast to try Beth’s Bar routine. They’ll tell you where to go.
Bars in 2010 is a completely different apparatus than even 6yrs ago. Astonishing.
What about this guy?
Sick. Injured. Tired. On a bad day, … Uchimura’s still the greatest gymnast who ever lived.
Shout out to one of the great ones. 
