img src=»/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/8072999489d777a9fdc545c28eb76b3d.jpg» virate named after Eteri Tutberidze. The right hand of the main woman of Russian figure skating, her permanent choreographer and almost trouble-free lightning rod in relationships with teenagers at a «difficult age» — it seems that how much Khrustalny costs, so much Daniil was in it. But in reality this is not entirely true.
Neophyte fans may be surprised that Gleichenhaus was the last to appear in the famous team. It all started, of course, with Eteri Georgievna — she returned from the USA and began to equip a working team in Moscow. Its first elements were the outstanding technical specialist Sergei Dudakov and the choreographer Alexei Zheleznyakov, who, having come to figure skating from dancing, was simultaneously teaching a jazz class and even staging programs on ice. Despite the fact that, in a certain sense, Aleksey coped, it soon became obvious that in order for the team to reach the top level, a specialized director was needed — and Eteri Georgievna began to search.
At first, she decided to delegate this function to invited specialists, the main of which was Ilya Averbukh. It was he who delivered the free program «Schindler's List» to the Olympic champion in the 2014 team tournament Yulia Lipnitskaya, and even after almost ten years this number is quoted at the top 3 level in the history of the Tutberidze school.
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After the Games in Sochi, Eteri Georgievna continued to work with Ilya Izyaslavich on the new prima «Crystal» Evgenia Medvedeva. But in parallel with this, Tutberidze began to prepare her director, and the most curious thing is that Averbukh himself helped to raise a competitor in the market.
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“It was 2014,” Gleikhengauz said on the air of Europe Plus radio. — I have already started training, at that time I was still skating in ice shows with Ilya Averbukh. I worked with him for two or three years, and at that moment he was working with Yulia Lipnitskaya, who skated with Eteri. It was just the Olympics in Sochi, where she won gold in the team. And Eteri turned to Ilya: there were changes in her team, she needed a new person who would be responsible for sliding. Ilya advised me.
Gleikhengauz came to Khrustalny from the Moskvich school at the age of 22-23 and immediately plunged into serious work. According to him, at first he was afraid to make comments to experienced athletes of the group, because some of them were older than himself. And yet, over time, he found the strength to declare his intention to expand his functionality from a simple skating coach to a person responsible for staging. At first, his ideas were rejected, but in the end, Eteri Georgievna recognized him as a promising director.The first truly high point for Gleikhengauz as a choreographer was the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. Before her, he was already quite famous, but after that he turned into the author of championship programs, ideally tailored to the athlete, in which hitherto unprecedented technical complexity and choreographic delights fit. The universalism and practicality of Gleichenhaus' productions have become his hallmarks for many years.
At the same time, Tutberidze did not keep him within the framework of choreography alone. Moreover, she in every possible way contributed to his manifestations as a coach, and to the extreme universal. Having been both a single skater and a dancer in his career, Gleichengauz knew firsthand about all aspects of figure skating from different angles, which helped him become one of the first convergent specialists in this sport.
After him, Tutberidze (by the way, perhaps the first multi-station trainer in Russia) tried to make something similar out of Sergey Rozanov, now the coach of the Evgeny Plushenko Academy, Dmitry Mikhailov, has similar functionality. In the rest of the world, it is perhaps worth highlighting Benoit Richaud, once just a choreographer who has now become a full-fledged coach. By the way, according to the latter, it was Daniil Markovich who pushed her to the first attempt of the quadruple jump — he also gave her the very first recommendations. And the greenhouses Evgeny Tarasova/Vladimir Morozov, before a full-fledged transfer to Khrustalny in the spring of 2021, worked together with him on the technique of emissions.
And yet, globally, Gleichengauz is a choreographer with a very characteristic, recognizable style. Being the director of Khrustalny, Daniil is forced to prepare a large number of programs for top-ranking stars for each season, and in each case, the main criteria for his work are not only exclusivity, but also ease of execution, taking into account the difficult technical content of the athletes. Under these conditions, the presence of similar strokes in a number of programs (for example, a large number of leg swings) is absolutely justified, with which many experts agree. For example, the famous Russian dancer Ramil Mehdiyev, in an interview with Match TV, assessed the style of Gleikhengauz as follows:
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"He just has his own handwriting. Look at the same ballet performances — Marius Petipa, for example. He also had his chips. Moiseev, Eifman — yes, everyone. They, too, in this case, can be reproached for stealing from themselves. You can't keep reinventing the wheel all the time. On the contrary, I think that this is Daniel's talent — he puts it in such a way that it is interesting to watch. And the viewer immediately understands that this is his.It is also worth noting his non-trivial approach to the choice of music. «Frida» by Alexandra Trusova, the soundtrack from the series «Master and Margarita» by Anna Shcherbakova, «Artsakh» by Adelia Petrosyan, «The Truman Show» and «Storm» by Kamila Valieva, Me Voy by Alina Zagitova — in the career of Gleichenhaus you can already find at least a dozen programs for compositions that either rarely sounded in figure skating, or did not sound at all. And each of them has become iconic in one way or another. At the same time, there is an obvious problem of fatigue. Here is what Gleikhengauz himself said on this subject last fall:
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"Creative fatigue appears in the season, even at the time of productions you think — what else to think of. But there is a year when you are looking for music, then a vacation. So far, there is no creative crisis.
Conveyor work leads to burnout, and the choreographer of Khrustalny, while maintaining the current workload, sooner or later runs the risk of colliding with it. At the same time, Daniil can hardly reduce the number of productions, and to be more precise, it is not a fact that he and his team will want to do this.
Why is that? According to information received from several athletes who worked with the Tutberidze team at different times, Eteri Georgievna does not like it when skaters turn to an outside specialist for productions. The explanation goes something like this: «We have a full-time choreographer — work with him.»
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Almost certainly the main reason for such categoricalness can be the banal convenience of working with the finished material, the formation of which you can influence. It has long been known that Tutberidze herself takes an active part in the production process — it is important for her that the programs are of high quality and fully meet the stated standards.
It can be said that cooperation with a permanent choreographer allows «Khrustalny» to prepare programs on a turnkey basis, which eliminates the need for careful fine-tuning them after a third-party choreographer with his taste and his own ideas about beauty. But such cases in figure skating happen, and often. One of the latest examples — in the 2019/20 season, Alexei Mishin was so dissatisfied with the staging of the short program by Elizaveta Tuktamysheva from She-Lynn Bourne that he decided … to completely change the music for it, retaining the choreography.
However, they change programs along the way in Khrustalny, but doing this with a full-time choreographer is much easier than again turning to an expensive specialist on the side. Also, in addition to saving time (and probably money), having one or two pairs of eyes helps to maintain some semblance of corporate style more strictly. An experienced fan must have heard something like «crystal» girl «or» girl Tutberidze «- and so, in the formation of this brand, the style of productions plays an important role.
Gleichengauz himself, it must be said, is also beneficial in the most literal sense — financially. For members of the Russian national team (there are a great many of them in Khrustalny), the federation allocates money to compensate for the costs of staging programs for the season. The amounts are different for everyone, but on average we can talk about 60 thousand rubles for one program — such a price tag, for example, was called several years ago by the champions of the Universiade in ice dancing Betina Popova and Sergey Mozgov. With this amount, as they say, it is worth starting bidding when we are talking about athletes of the first magnitude, and in the case of stars of the level of the Tutberidze group, the final figures are almost certainly higher.Usually this money is transferred to the skater, and he himself decides which particular director to give it to. At the same time, Gleikhengauz, according to information, does not receive funds for staging in Khrustalny — only a salary. What's the catch? In fact, everything is simple. In our figure skating, there is a practice when the federation sends money to compensate for «staging» costs directly to the director, bypassing the skater. This happens when a skater or any person responsible for him notifies the federation in advance of who will put the program on him — and in order to avoid bureaucratic delays, the funds are immediately sent to him. This doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. For example, as far as it is known, according to a similar scheme, junior figure skater Kamilla Nelyubova, who trained at the Plushenko Angels and left the academy this offseason, was compensated for the costs of programs. a1e676513.jpgIn «Khrustalny», according to information, the same system of direct transfer of money to the director operates. It is legal and does not contradict the internal rules of the federation, however, this may indicate that the skaters of the group either have no choice, or they simply do not have the funds to work with another director. On the other hand, when a specialist of such a high level as Gleichengauz collaborates with you on a regular basis, whose programs have already proven their effectiveness more than a dozen times and for whom the queue for productions from outside is taken ahead of time, is it worth worrying about something? Despite the fact that the directors of his status can receive around 200-300 thousand rubles for one program (checks from the federation are obviously smaller), due to the mass character, he almost certainly covers these amounts with a margin. And when the work brings not only moral satisfaction, but also a good income, then there should be no problems with burnout.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.