OE: What good wind blew you in figure skating?

SP: I retired. Perestroika started, I had to do something for a living. A friend of mine, a ballet on ice director, asked me to put his company into shape. For a year I worked as a repetiteur in Elena Gagarina’s Ice show. After this I was noticed and coaches began to invite me as a “workhorse”. At first I wasn’t choreographing programs. In this sense the starting point was my work with a Junior Pairs group. I felt like a blind kitten thrown into water, since at the moment I knew little about figure skating. I only realized the huge difference between floor and ice. The first pair I seriously worked with as a choreographer were the Junior World Champions Maksiuta/Zhovnirsky. Then I switched to ice-dancers. I choreographed programs for Tatiana Romaniuta and Daniil Barantsev, two-times Junior World Champions. Now I’m assisting Alexei Gorshkov to coach a Bulgarian pair Albena Denkova/Maxim Staviski and a Russian pair Oksana Domnina/Maxim Shabalin. 

OE: And what is the main peculiarity of ice dance choreography?

SP: It’s reverse. What is good on ballet stage looks trivial on ice and vice versa. So I had to change my view on many things. Though on the whole unusual and original choreographic ideas in figure skating is last century for the ballet stage. 

OE: Then what do you think of the situation when skaters, not being professional dancers, choreograph routines for themselves and their students?

SP:  Why not? There are many examples of, say, not professional artists who became great masters.

OE: Opinions about the new judgement system are quite controversial. What do you think about ISU innovations?

SP: As a choreographer, I dislike some compulsory lifts. I think all those splits with head down and legs up look non-aesthetic. But as these elements get the maximum scores skaters are forced to do them. And it evens the dance itself, makes routines look alike, since the lift could be easier but more spectacular and would covey some meaning. Unfortunately, we are getting remote from it, and that’s a shortcoming of the ISU innovations. Positive changes mostly have to do with the technique, now the basic skating requirements are higher.

OE: Maybe it was the intention: not to make figure skating kind of show?

SP: Then ice dance should be called differently. Technique and choreography used to be equally important components and now there’s an obvious bias towards technique. And I can understand why. It’s easier to score. Today every choreography starts with a stop-watch in hand. Ten seconds for this compulsory lift, five – for that, number of rotation during a spin is counted. It’s clear these requirements are motivated by the wish to achieve objective scores. Perception is subjective, and nothing could be done with it. It’s like in painting – some people like abstractionists, other – classics. And they are right in their preferences. It would be different if professionals gave scores for the dance itself. Talking about it I’m not derogating judges’ expertise but I as a choreographer I have much to say. But I hold my tongue. There’re rules and we must follow them.

OE: And how to choreograph a program that would be appreciated both by the audience and the judges?

SP: Sometimes people who are sitting in the audience and chewing popcorn can be captivated by seemingly easy things. This year I was impressed by a young American skater at a Grand Prix event in Paris. He wasn’t doing anything extraordinary on ice, yet his exceptional skating to classical music was so emotional that he got a standing ovation from the public in the huge “Bercy”. So it’s hard to count the art.

OE: Of all programs you choreographed, which one is your favourite? 

SP: Last season’s Denkova/Stavisky’s FD to Haendel. I believe it was a great effort of their coach Alexei Gorshkov, the guys and mine. Though later they were blamed for choosing too serious music. This year almost all top pairs skate to serious music.

OE: Do you think “Petukhov’s style” exists?

SP: The guys say “yes”. “You’re always tying us in a knot,” they say. I cannot answer myself. I think it’s like handwriting – everyone has their own.

OE: Creating new programs must be extremely difficult, one need to have a computer in the head.

SP: Not at all. One needs God in soul and some imagination.

Translation: Vera Alexandrova