“We can be proud that some of Yuzuru Hanyu’s earliest discoveries were made with us” – Bestemyanova

Natalya Bestemyanova, Olympic champion in figure skating in 1988, told what she can be proud of in her profession.

– At the end of my sports career, I had the opportunity to study at GITIS. My husband Igor Bobrin was working at that time at GITIS as a figure skating choreographer-choreographer. I entered the GITIS, and such a number of sketches that we did there, certain acts that I had to present to the exams and that I staged with the artists of our theater, gave me confidence that I I can think of something, I can do something original, and the audience, the performers and the experts who have evaluated the performances love it. Several of my exam papers then took place in our theater, where I worked. Thank God, Igor allowed me to put them in programs! All this gave me confidence.

Then we started working with the programs of the French duo Monnotte/Lavanchy. We worked with them with Andrey Bukin. And they started working with the Italian Massimo Scali when he skated with his first partner Flavia Ottaviane, then they helped Scali with Federica Faiella. We didn’t make complete programs for them, but we introduced some choreographic finds. By the way, after the most difficult choreographic twists of Fayell / Scali, their program was taken as the standard of difficulty of the program. Then, ice dancing was very complicated in the rules. At least, that’s how I saw it.

After that, Igor and I started working both in America and in Japan. Tamara Moskvina also invited us into her couples. In general, a long list: the Japanese team, and the French, and the American. And, of course, it seems to me that the main thing we can talk about with pride is that the first discoveries for Yuzuru Hanyu were made with us. When Hanyu was not particularly famous in the world, we offered him different hand positions in rotations. Then no one even thought about it. And we experimented, invented, and to some extent, with our suggestion, Hanyu introduced all of that into figure skating.

So it was very natural and I was very interested. It was part of my life as a figure skater, which really adorned it. Therefore, I am happy to choreograph on ice, – Bestemyanova is quoted as saying “Championship”.

Earlier, 27-year-old Hanyu announced his retirement and transition to the pros. The Japanese won gold medals at the Olympic Games in 2014 and 2018, and also won gold at the World Championships twice (2014, 2017).

Championship