BRINGING ARTISTRY BACK

THE FORMER CIRQUE DU SOLEIL CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS ON A MISSION TO REINFUSE GYMNASTICS WITH THE ARTISTRY THAT DEFINED THE SPORT IN BYGONE ERAS.

 

How do you define artistry? And if you know that everyone has a different definition of what is artistic, how do you elevate the artistic content in a sport like gymnastics?

Lyn Heward (CAN) has a few ideas. The former Artistic Director of Cirque du Soleil, who has spent the better part of two decades helping create the spectacle of one of the world-renowned circus, has teamed with music specialist Lasse Nettum of the Norwegian College of Sports Science in Oslo to re-infuse artistry into Women’s Artistic Gymnastics.

Through a series of Artistry Workshops, given at FIG World Championship events beginning in 2013, Heward and Nettum have attempted to guide judges and coaches in the creation of original, artistic works, particularly on Balance Beam and Floor Exercise, where the Code of Points has been modified specifically with an eye to increasing artistic content.

“Routine composition is really the combination of music, gymnastic movement, dance movement and how we're able to integrate all of those elements together in order to make it a harmonious unit, one that preferably doesn't stop, one that allows you to reach out to the audience,”

Heward says. Read more below.

 

Let’s start with the “why”. What necessitated the need to have people give clinics on how to recapture artistry in routine construction?

"It's really a combination of things. First of all, I would have to say because we're in sport, the whole stronger, faster, longer, higher movement, there's a call for that. If we were all doing what we were doing in the ‘70s and ‘80s, gymnastics would be withering. As an Olympic sport, and as a World Championship sport, people expect you to perform more. You have to have that element in it, but there has to be a balance between the two.

 

“We have chosen to work in artistic sports. We have chosen to work with music. This is really important: Somewhere in the history of gymnastics, we chose to start working with music. All of the sudden, the music becomes the support and the raison d'être of the exercise -- in other words it gives us the theme and the color of exercise, and it also becomes our competition, because we have to live up to it. So if you take "Ave Maria," which we've seen several times in Rhythmic Gymnastics, it better be a darn good performance, because the music itself is part of the challenge. Are you able to pull everything out of that music and introduce it into your routine?”

How should gymnasts reconcile the need to perform more difficulty (the faster-higher-stronger of sport) while remaining artistic?

“The problem with difficulty -- and this happens on Balance Beam and particularly with Floor Exercise and to a certain degree in Acro  – is that the preparation for the large difficulty elements often leads to disconnects in the routine, i.e. the gymnast stopping for a second or two in the corner or simply walking into the corner or simply walking out of the corner. So we have these periods in the routines, generally on Floor Exercise, where you may have developed a nice flow to the dance section and the simple gymnastics skills that are in that section, but then you disconnect as you prepare to tumble and you stand in the corner. And that's something that the FIG wants to address specifically.

"It's to bring it all together to make a gymnastic and artistic whole with a routine. A solid whole. And that speaks really in synchronisation and the wonderful pieces of music that people are choosing to work with. You may have the talent, but you've got to go and reach out, and as they used to say, touch someone. And that's the oomph of artistry. At every World Championships there are always going to be three or four or five gymnasts who come to the fore, who really make a strong mark. Those are the ones who we remember, back to the 1960s and 1970s, and we can pinpoint them. And some people will disagree on one routine or two routines, but most of the time they get it because they themselves have been touched by that particular performer.”

What factors should coaches and choreographers take into account when trying to create “artistic” routines?

“Gymnastics is supposed to be a flowing sport. Look at Uneven Bars. It flows. Balance Beam is supposed to flow. Vaulting flows and even Floor Exercise has to flow."

"But as soon as you increase the level of difficulty...even triple turns, the girls take a long time to prepare for them. And then you wind up like a little top, swing your arms to the left, pull to the right, wrap your leg up over your head with a rounded back, hold your ankle like there's no tomorrow and spin three times and you've got your difficulty. But it doesn't mean it's beautiful. It just means you did it.

“There are some good ones out there. But at some point in time, we will have that period where the artistic training shows through again. What we saw at the ‘76 Olympics was an example of that, what we saw in 1985 where we had several girls doing extremely artistic Floor routines, and a few years after that. There's always an Olga Mostepanova, there's always an Oksana Omelienchik, there's always a Nadia Comaneci. But the difference is, the requirements on the girls today are much higher than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

"Do you realise in Montreal that Omelienchik did not even do a single turn? She did not go down on the floor and she did not do a single turn. And she got a 10. And I was the head of scoring at that Championships, but it wasn't just the judges who decided that she won. It was all the people in the Velodrome who decided. And it was right in the context of the time, and it was amazing at that time, but it was also the story of a little bird, flitting around, a little Ukrainian bird. So the little Ukrainian girl would never go to the ground, because a bird doesn't go to the ground. There's no logic in it.

“The idea was that she was consciously moving all the time just like a little bird going from one tree to the next tree to the next tree. That's the way I always interpreted that routine. What was important about it was A) The tumbling for that period of time, and B) The ability to smile, to say, this looks so easy, any little bird can do this, and then take the people with you on a journey. And that's what they did. And Nadia did the same thing. It was a different kind of journey in ‘76. And Olga Mostepanova had done it in a very aesthetic, very balletic fashion, but they all bring that element which is sometimes indescribable.

 

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“It's funny -- it's easier for the spectators to pick them out than it is for the judges who are focusing on difficulties and counting this and counting that and execution. It applies to both Synchronised Swimming and Figure Skating as well. People recognise it. I don't say go to the people and ask them to judge. But they will recognise great performances before we will.”

If you could change one thing about the current Code of Points or rules to bolster artistry, what would you change?

"It's very different from discipline to discipline, because each discipline has not only its own rules but its own set of competitions. For example, you look at Acro and they have their Dynamic routine and their Balance routine and then they have their Combined routine. And as soon as we start allowing for stops -- two seconds in the corner, one second in the corner -- we are taking something away from what should be the natural fluidity of gymnastics. Go back into the ‘60s with Vera Caslavska and all those people, and it was very fluid. They never stopped moving. And I think one of the most important things is to get the flow back. It's got to be done for Balance Beam as well.

“The spectators and the judges aren't stupid. If there's a big tumbling pass about to be done on the beam, the girl will stop, wave her arms around a couple of times without essentially moving and then do the tumbling line, show that she's landed and then go back into a dance sequence and then do the same thing with another line. Your coach has to build a routine that has its own distinct lyricism and rhythm to it. It cannot be just building routines based on tumbling or based on an Acrobatic pyramid or based on manipulation in Rhythmic.

“The only discipline that's constantly fluid is Aerobic, because of the necessity and the speed of the sport. So to answer the question, getting this notion of gymnasts are free, they should be flowing at all times. You know what happens when a bird stops flapping its wings -- it falls to the ground. It's better to keep that flow going.”

Difficulty aside, what are the biggest challenges people have with artistry right now?

“One of the biggest challenges we have in gymnastics is people understanding rhythm. The first thing you think of when you're a dancer is that rhythm is the most important thing that we have to connect with when we're doing choreography. So the basis of it, understanding music, and more specifically rhythm, is really the first part of the workshop, because whether you are doing a routine with music on Floor or on Balance Beam, rhythm is still important.”

 

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Has the way gymnastics changed over the decades changed the relationship between coach and choreographer?

“In the old days -- and I'm an old days coach -- the partnership between the choreographer and the coach had to be strong. Gymnasts don’t train dance to the degree they were training it in the ‘70s or ‘80s, and the excuse is "Oh, well there's so much more difficulty." But in having so much more difficulty we're creating so many more stops and the fluidity isn't there. A routine from the beginning to the end should make one big statement, and not 'I am good at tumbling,' 'I did a turn,' 'I did two jumps.' We should see it as a unified performance, and that's hard to do. But the best people do it. It's something you have to strive for."

"Even on Balance Beam, you must have music in your head. You have to have whatever kind of music you have in your head, because that will guide the flow of the routine in your head. You cannot separate it."

How important is musical choice in this process?

“Choice of music is extremely important, because it also determines your relationship with the spectator, your relationship with the judge, and also your ability to perform the exercise correctly. If the music is too fast or the music is too complicated for a gymnast, of course it's going to hinder the performance. That's the role of the coach. In conjunction with the gymnast, you have to create that exercise. I call that artistic composition.

“The second part of it is that Artistry includes things like musicality, expression, interaction with a partner if you compete in a partner event. And that's when you start creeping into that lofty zone where you're expected to move not only the spectators in the house, but move the judges and the jury. In other words, if you are capable of taking all of those artistic components and if you are able to use the music to its full extent and make a good choice of it, if you are able to use your expression and be a good partner, if you show musicality, then you are sliding into another domain that we will call artistry. And I think what we are trying to do right now is to connect all of those dots together so that we can take gymnastics to the next level.”

And what would that next level be for you?

“To move people, where people are in absolute awe. It's not just about crossing a finish line before everybody else, but actually leaving people with a strong sense of emotion. And we've had gymnasts in all of the disciplines who have done that, but we just don't have enough doing it on a regular basis. We had Nadia in the 70s. We had Omelienchik in the 80s. We can go through a list of people where the audience would spontaneously, irrespective of the judges' score, would stand up and say ‘Wow. That moved me.’"

What do you think of the routines we’re seeing in this quadrennial?

“I was at the Rhythmic World Championships in 2013, and Acrobatic Worlds in 2014, and there are some performances that are doing that. But how do we get more people going in that direction and taking it to the next level? We really have to bring all of those elements -- the expression, the musicality, the partnership -- together in order to take it to that level on a regular basis. And not only that, to grow gymnastics, to make it an even more popular sport. Music and artistry connect with everybody, whether they are in or outside of sport. These things connect with people because they're connecting with the pulse and the heart in your body and not in your brain.”

On Floor female gymnasts have to work with music. But what about Balance Beam?

“Balance Beam is still about striking a rhythm and a pace. You have all these difficult moves and you have some nice dance skills, but how do they link all together? We have great difficulty but we don't have some of the "artistry" on Balance Beam that existed quite easily in the 70s and 80s and early 90s. So part of it is rules and rules are constructive, but also it's the ability of the coach and the gymnast to work through it in spite of the fact that there are higher degrees of difficulty.

“Just because you have a higher degree of difficulty doesn't mean that you are undoing the rules of sport. You still have to have rhythm, you still have to have pace, you still have to use the music in its full extent if it's on floor. Difficulty is not an excuse to reduce artistry. Or it shouldn't be.”

Would you advise coaches to pick out a piece of music to play while their gymnasts do Balance Beam in the gym?

"I've been proposing that for a long time! I actually have a fluke example of one of the gymnasts doing a Balance Beam routine while music from ‘West Side Story’ was playing on Floor Exercise. And her routine totally follows the music. Then she fell in her last tumbling line and broke it up, but up until then every accent was right on. At the World Championships way, way back in the 70s and 80s, they used to have the pianist play for the gymnast as they were doing their routines. It was a viable way of correcting it. On Floor you just have to work on making sure people understand that there are no stops before tumbling and no stops after.”

Do you think the FIG should be pushing for artistry and difficulty in equal measures?

"In a way the FIG does it well. There's a push for Artistry, followed by a push for Difficulty, followed by a more Artistic cycle, followed by another push for Difficulty. That's the FIG's way of balancing out the growth of the sport. To a certain extent it's normal, because like other sports, it's bigger-faster-stronger-more beautiful. It's normal to have that growth as long as you're able to balance again in the next cycle. And it's a lot to look at. It's easier for the judges to understand than the coaches to implement."