Word: shen
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Russian figure skaters can take a patriotic turn to Tchaikovsky. Americans can glide to Gershwin. But nobody in the skating community has heard of Xian Xinghai, one of China's premier composers. And that's a problem for Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, the skating duo who rank among China's top medal hopes for the Salt Lake City Games. "If we choose to skate to the most famous Chinese music," says Zhao, "no one will even recognize it, which puts us at a big disadvantage. It isn't really fair...
...time world champion runners-up, Shen and Zhao possess an awesome array of technical tricks. They hope to become the first pair of skaters to include a quadruple-throw Salchow in their Olympic routine. But the duo has been consistently marked down for a lack of artistic flair. Judges look for the grace, fluidity and lyricism that the great Russian partners bring to the sport, a prejudice that fans of a more athletic style of skating have long criticized. Now an aggrieved Shen and Zhao have added a new dimension to that complaint: they (and their supporters) feel they...
...figure skating, peripherals like music, costumes and makeup are all part of a carefully crafted whole. Case in point: the 1995-96 World Championship in Canada, where skating officials hinted to Shen and Zhao's coach that their 15th-place finish might have had something to do with their musical choice?Yellow River, a traditional Chinese tune. The officials also suggested the pair's choreography, which drew inspiration from Peking opera, was too jerky for Western tastes. And the duo lacked the sexual chemistry that judges love. "We learned quickly that you have to please the judges with something they...
...China's state media and the national skating federation have exhorted the pair to maintain their cultural integ-rity. Shen and Zhao say they don't want to turn their back on their culture, especially during the Olympics, when national pride counts as much as individual glory. But they also want to win. So the pair has kept an Eastern element with their musical choice: Turandot, Italian composer Puccini's rendition of a classic Chinese love story. But they have hired an American choreographer to tame their exuberant style into something more fluid and romantic, and exchanged their demure looks...
...Jenny I. Shen '01, a chemistry concentrator and co-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association, said she looks forward to the opportunity to discuss diversity in science and technology with professors and peers...