So You Think She Can't Dance?!

Dance and a sense of performance and presentation have never come naturally to Thea. But Tuesday, she received her second floor routine private with Leah Homma. And....wow! Amazing transformation happening.

Thea still doesn't look like she's "dancing" the movements (of course, part of it is that she's still just learning and acquiring the routine); but what Leah is great at is her emphasis on hitting positions and poses, which sort of masks the deficiencies.




Actually, much of what I see in women's gymnastics looks rather technically wooden and robotic to me...fake smiles and bad "acting", rather than performed expressively and effused with passion and personality. But maybe that's just me....

Oksana Omeliantchik, in my opinion, remains one of the most expressive and joyous gymnasts to watch. She sets the bar on what a floor routine could and should be like, as a performance. Especially noticeable during close-ups where you can see her facial expressions, from a raised eyebrow here and an elfin grin there.




Too bad there aren't more closeups during her dance, than what we get at the beginning of this clip.

Elfin Personality and Charm

I posted 2 years ago on my favorite female gymnastics star, Oksana Omeliantchik (my preferred spelling). It is extremely difficult to find good quality video of her. Here is one footage of her from the 1986 World Sports Fair Tokyo. Again, it is her expressiveness that really shines through in her floor routines. When she performs, she wears her personality on her sleeve.

Here's a comment I left on the YouTube site, 5 months ago:

I distinctly remember watching her 1985 World Championship routine on ABC Wide World of Sports. I became an instant fan, because when I watched her, she had such a vibrant expressiveness to her performance. It was just such a joy to watch her facial expressions! She didn't just go through the technical motions. Her whole personality came through in her presentation.

Oksana possesses one of those qualities that you just can't really teach: innate charm and an infectious personality. What can be taught, is how to act...how to deliver presentation on stage. Gymnastics is a subjective sport, so presentation and being a performer- exposing one's personality for an audience- makes one stand apart from the "just-going-through-the-motions" competitors.

Oksana Omeliantchik

I've been searching for this for ages; I actually have a copy of the 1985 World Championships, as televised on ABC, but it's on beta...and I no longer have a betamax video player. So by accident, while checking a comment left by someone about my videos, I noticed that some people have been posting videos of Oksana Omeliantchik's routines.

To this day, she remains my favorite female gymnast. Most gymnasts look rather wooden and too technical in their floor routine and in the choreography...like everything is just filler for the tumbling. But Oksana is extremely expressive in showing off her personality (if the video quality were better, you could see her facial expressions and infectious, elfin smile), and the choreography fits it like a glove. Her tumbling, at the time, in 1985 was extraordinary- and even seeing it today, the combinations in her passes are beautiful to behold. Sometimes I'll watch old tapes, see a transition move or skill, and wonder, "I miss that." Because many routines sometimes get built around fulfilling the code of points- so that what was at one time original sets a trend, so that they begin looking like carbon copy routines and combination skills that everyone else is doing.

Both videos are of the same floor routine at the 1985 World Gymnastics Championships. The first one is not great in quality, but is from the ABC telecast; the 2nd looks to be from a personal camcorder (but I could be wrong, since I found someone else had uploaded the same exact footage), but the picture is clearer- lacking the close ups, though.

Bonuses routines of her on the other apparatus are below.





Bars:



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