On the eve of Moscow, test skates with the participation of the strongest Russian figure skaters ended. But despite a number of memorable performances, the most discussed topic of the weekend was the situation around Peter Gumennik, who replaced the number just before the rental.
The "problems" of the vice-champion of the country became known on Saturday immediately after the end of short rentals. The athlete himself spoke about them on the air of Channel One. According to him, this season he plans to use the song Sonne in the short program, and was going to present it in full at Megasport. But "for reasons beyond his control" he failed to do so.
"To my regret and the regret of the whole team, the old program was abandoned," admitted the reigning champion of the Russian Grand Prix.
His mentor Veronika Daineko spoke in more detail about the situation. According to her, the day before leaving for rentals, her colleague Tamara Moskvina approached her and showed her an email. It spoke about the inexpediency of choosing the repertoire of the German team and contained a request "to restore order in those sports where musical accompaniment is used."
"Meaning... was that Rammstein is unpatriotic, bad and things like that... She refused to forward this letter to me. The letter was from Yevgeny Kartushin to the Ministry of Sports (Oleg. - RT) Matytsin. The mailing list included the addresses of the federations of all winter sports. Tamara Nikolaevna said that this is a matter of national importance, and we cannot put our interests above national importance. You never know what we want. Our federation said that it is undesirable to skate to Rammstein, but there were no threats that we would be punished," Daineko wrote on social networks.
According to the expert, they and the team tried to find an analogue of Sonne, so as not to recycle the entire room as a whole, but failed. And it was unrealistic to cope with such a task in a few days, because it was necessary to put what had been accumulated over the past four months. At the same time, they did not consider it possible to challenge this recommendation in any way, without even having a letter in their hands.
"I wanted to remove Peter from the rentals, because he had just started training after the illness (since you can't show a new program, since the elements can't do in full force, what to show), I didn't succeed. All in a heap, I could not rake up the heap. I'm sorry, I'm really ashamed as a coach," Daineko added.
As expected, his mother Elena Gumennik also sided with Peter. According to her, they try not to confuse the work and personality of its author. After all, in this case, you can go far.
"Someone drank, someone married serfs by force, someone was a gambler. I think a lot of people think so. But the music still had to be changed so as not to cause unnecessary emotions in people who do not support this opinion, cannot separate the personality of the creator and the product created by him. So now, thinking about the new program, first of all, we will carefully study the biographies. Although with a very painstaking study, I am afraid that the suitable circle will narrow. But jokes aside, it is important to respect the feelings of others, even if they seem incomprehensible to us, "Gumennik quotes Match TV.
At the same time, the acting president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) Anton Sikharulidze told TASS that the skater was not forbidden to perform under Rammstein.
"Of course not," he said in response to a question about whether the federation had banned the use of Rammstein's music.
In turn, the Director General of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, Alexander Kogan, urged "not to engage in nonsense" in response to a request to comment on the situation.
It is not yet possible to say with certainty why exactly Humennik was not allowed to bring his idea to life. After all, the letter mentioned by Daineko was never published. At the same time, most of the other athletes performed under the repertoire of non-domestic musicians, and at the same time no questions arose to them.
If we discard classical works (although here, if desired, you can find reasons for discontent) and focus exclusively on modern material, then the compositions of foreign performers prevailed in the numbers of Russian figure skaters. Take short programs. So, Alyona Kostornaya and Georgy Kunitsa skated to the song Beyonce - Crazy in Love, sung by the Swiss band Kadebostany, Maya Khromykh - Ashes Celine Dion, Annabel Morozov and Igor Eremenko - a medley of Queen songs, and Andrey Mozalev went on the ice to Romance from Apocalyptica - also a metal band. And even though the music of the last band is predominantly instrumental, it also has a gloomy atmosphere.
In addition, songs were repeatedly heard not only in English, but also in French. Three numbers were shown at once under Charles Aznavour's La Boheme, and Evgeny Semenenko performed under the track of Canadian Bruno Pelletier Le Clown. And this can hardly be considered more patriotic than rolling for material in German.
Perhaps for some, Rammstein's music may really seem too heavy, the singing of their vocalist Till Lindemann is too rude. But can this be considered a worthy reason for the ban? Rather, here we are talking about personal tastes and boundaries of what is permitted, which are different for each person. For example, at one time, Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov were not prevented from taking Evanescence - Bring me to life, despite the "overloaded" voice of Ben Moody, the ex-guitarist and backing vocalist of Evanescence. And Gumennik himself had previously used another hit of the Germans - Mein Herz Brennt, albeit in demonstration performances.
The reason may lie not only in the music. Most recently, Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann became involved in a major scandal that almost put an end to his career. He was suspected of sexual harassment and coercion, as well as rape, and the punishment could be imprisonment for a term of six months to five years. But later the frontman was able to refute the accusations against him.
One way or another, the case of Gumennik not only caused a great resonance, but also divided the experts into two camps. Some considered it logical to abandon the composition, others did not see anything wrong with it. One of these was the 2009 European champion in ice dancing Sergey Novitsky.
"In my opinion, this is now a rather difficult topic for discussion. On the one hand, we, of course, have the right to assume that Rammstein is a German band with a rather provocative creativity, in which, if you wish, you can see something there. That's why there's a problem with them. But we must not forget that this is what they attract attention to. If you work well on the image, you can make an interesting program. I believe that the same Scorpions could be suitable, because they have nothing to cling to, like Rammstein. Now there is a trend to focus more on domestic creativity, it seems to me. But here it is important not to close on ourselves and not to isolate ourselves from the whole world. And then it turns out that we can't ride to German music, but driving their cars is different, "Novitsky told RT.
A diametrically opposite position was taken by the silver medalist of the 2002 Olympics Ilya Averbukh. According to him, it was necessary to reject this idea at the discussion stage.
"It seems to me that every performer, coach and choreographer should have their own internal censor. Personally, this would not even occur to me. Of course, there was no mystery in the choice of composition for Gumennik's program. But when I heard about the approved song, I immediately thought that it was irrelevant at the moment," said Averbukh.
RT columnist Elena Vaitsekhovskaya concluded that in the case of Gumennik, those who made the decision decided to play it safe. On the one hand, no one opposed it, not even the leadership of Channel One, but no one dared to take responsibility.
"Could the Figure Skating Federation stop the development of this odious story? Quite. Moreover, it was she who had to do it. Elena Anatolyevna Tchaikovsky once ate a dog on how to circumvent the ideological prohibitions that existed in Soviet times so that outstanding Western music appeared in Russian figure skating. Then there were enough bans, by the way. The rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar was generally blocked in the bud - for the same ideological reasons, "Vaitsekhovskaya recalled.
At the same time, the Olympic champion is not sure that Moskvina, who runs the school in which Gumennik himself is engaged, could stand up for the athlete.
"Igor Borisovich Moskvin, I think, would definitely fit in. But his attitude to music has always been different. For Tamara Nikolaevna, the political component has always been more important in this regard - it is enough to recall the story of the re-awarding in Salt Lake City. Well, now that the story has turned into a scandal, it will take a long time to rake up, "Vaitsekhovskaya concluded.