“Sinnerman” and Bolero
Jason Brown (USA) skating to “Sinnerman”
Kamilia Valieva (RUS)
Skating to Ravel’s “Bolero”
Sinnerman
Short Program for Jason Brown (2020-21, 2021-22)
Oh, Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day
Each time Jason Brown takes the ice for his “Sinnerman” short program he’s doing much more than representing the USA, or showcasing his sublime artistic ability at its absolute best. He’s embodying the spirit of a human rights battle as long and emotional as his home country (if not the world) has ever known.
The song itself is a traditional African American spiritual (with lyrics inspired by the biblical book of Exodus) telling of a sinner trying, in vain, to hide from divine justice come Judgment Day. It was first recorded by Les Baxter’s orchestra in 1956, and went through a number of folk and gospel pressings before singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone laid down what many see as the definitive version-- TEN minutes and 22 seconds of ferocious, bluesy jazz that served as the final track of her 1965 album Pastel Blues. (It has since been sampled by everyone from Kayne West to Timbaland to Hozier.)
(If you listen through the end of this clip, you’ll hear that the cymbal ending you may be familiar with via skating programs is only the first in a long, long string of cymbal crashes ending Simone’s version of the piece.)
Some skating fans will recall first hearing a three-minute edit of “Sinnerman” seven years ago, when Canada’s Nam Nguyen used it for his SP with Jeffrey Buttle doing the choreography.
Simone’s arrangement of “Sinnerman” became one of her best-loved works; many a live performance of hers closed with the song. But a few years before releasing it, “Sinner Man” that had also been brought to life through dance-- the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, to be specific.
“Revelations” is the name of AAADT’s signature work; a three-part modern dance illustration of the historical African-American experience that was first staged in New York City in 1960. And “Sinner Man” (two words, not one as Simone stylized it) leads off the third movement of “Revelations” known as “Move, Members, Move.” See if you recognize the energy and style in this clip of the dance that was featured on So You Think You Can Dance back in 2015:
It was with Ailey’s work in mind, according to this excellent article by Lynn Rutherford, that Jason Brown’s longtime choreographer Rohene Ward set out to “create a program for Brown rooted in the Ailey vocabulary: athletic presentation, combined with long extensions and fluid, yet controlled, upper body movements.”
Brown first used “Sinnerman” for his 2020-21 season, and it factored into a 7th place finish at a spectator-free Worlds last time around. But the desire to put this piece out in front of live skating fans-- along with, just maybe, a bit of popular (and critical) demand-- got the SP “renewed” for a second skating season.
“It’s all about the symbols, the shape, the lines. Alvin Ailey is such a modern, contemporary take on dance, unlike anything I’ve seen before with other styles,” Brown said in Rutherford’s article (which I’m sharing the link once again because, seriously, you should read it). “It’s really about this abstract movement on a piece of modern music.”
Shoma Uno is one of several using “Bolero” this season
“Bolero”
How did a one-movement, highly repetitive, 15 minute orchestral piece become an established part of figure skating’s music history?
First, it helps to know how it came to be at all. “Bolero,” the best-known work of French composer Maurice Ravel, was a ballet commissioned by Russian actress/dancer Ida Rubenstein that made its public debut in 1928. (The “bolero” itself is a form of Spanish dance; Ravel settled on it as the basis for his composition after a couple other “basis” ideas fell through.)
What sets his “Bolero” apart is what might be considered the love/hate angle: two relatively simple melodies played atop an insistent, very moderate snare drum rhythm that starts pianissimo (one of the softest musical dynamics) and builds towards fortissimo possible (as loud as possible) for 15 minutes-- with the orchestration building the entire time, of course.
If you listen to this fascinating analysis of “Bolero” available on YouTube, you’ll learn of not only the details of that orchestral build (with all 15+ minutes playing in the background) but of a widely discussed theory that the repetitive (some say mechanical) nature of the piece stems from Ravel himself being in the early stages of progressive aphasia… hence the “neurological damage” mentioned in the analysis. (Maurice Ravel grew increasingly unable to compose in the years after “Bolero” and passed away in 1937 at age 62.)
As popular as it was in the earlier part of the 20th century, “Bolero” took on new life when it was prominently featured in the Blake Edwards romantic comedy 10 in 1979-- in fact, it generated an estimated $1 million in royalties for Ravel’s estate as fans of the film sought out the sensual qualities of the piece (as described by Bo Derek in this clip from the film).
It was five years after 10 when British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean captivated audiences (and skating judges) like never before with their free dance performance to “Bolero” at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.
In this 2014 article from The Guardian, Torvill and Dean explain how their dominance in the sport at that point prompted them to take a risk in their Olympic season. Having already experimented successfully with singular pieces of music in their free dance programs (winning world titles with Mack and Mabel in 1981-2, and then Barnum in 1982-3), they embraced “Bolero” for what they knew would be seen as “radical” in the figure skating world.
“Most skating music goes fast-slow-fast, building to a finish with a big hurrah,” Dean says in the Guardian article. But Boléro was different: we had often used it as a warmup and realised it would be perfect for where we wanted to go. Some people find a style and stick with it. We wanted to shake things up.”
They even “shook things up” with regards to the length of their “Bolero” cut, for the 4:28 running time (the absolute minimum they found they could get it down to for their purposes) was still 18 seconds longer than the maximum length allowed for FD’s at that time. This is why the couple spends a significant amount of time on their knees at the beginning of the piece; they found via the rulebooks that the proverbial stopwatch only started with the first pushoff of a skate blade.
Torvill and Dean’s “Bolero” performance-- which generated nothing but 6.0s for artistic impression scores (6.0 being a “perfect” score at the time)-- was so iconic that it was well over a decade before other elite skaters tried taking it on. Future ice dance OGMs Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostamarov did so early in their international career (during the 1998-99 season)…
And Evgeni Plushenko did the same in 2001, though he used it for this short program-- consequently truncating the original 15+ minutes even further. (I’d also argue that the lack of “build” in the program + Plushenko’s anything-but-subtle artistic qualities obliterated the purpose of using Ravel’s work in the first place.)
But “Bolero” in 4-minute form has been heard with increasing frequency in the 21st century, most notably Michelle Kwan in her final competitive season (2005-6)...
And Carolina Kostner, winning Olympic Bronze with it in 2014…
As for this Olympic season (2021-22), some 38 years after the Torvill/Dean performance, no less than TWO potential medalists are using it-- albeit two different stylings:
Japan’s Shoma Uno, using a version with vocals by Japanese sopranist Tomotaka Okamoto…
And Russia’s Kamila Valieva, with a more traditional take recorded by Eric Hammerstein and the London Promenade Orchestra:
If either Uno or Valieva emerge as Olympic Champions in 2022, they’ll be the first single skaters to repeat the feat accomplished by Torvill/Dean in ‘84.
