The large-scale show “Champions. Popular songs about the main thing “by Ilya Averbukh was held at the Megasport sports palace in the capital. For the first time, the figure skater and choreographer presented himself in Moscow with a program dedicated to Victory Day. It was conceived as a single performance and all the numbers were performed for the first time. The athletes performed to live music accompanied by the State Academic Russian Folk Ensemble “Russia” named after Lyudmila Zykin. The voices of the project were Evgenia Ryabtseva and Ruslan Ivakin.
Famous skaters skated spectacularly and with inspiration to everyone’s favorite songs: Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin (“Echo of Love”), Evgenia Medvedeva and Alexander Enbert (“Swan Fidelity”), Alexei Yagudin (“How We Were Young”), Albena Denkova and Maxim Stavisky (“Song of a distant homeland”), Valeria Loseva and Valery Sinitsyn (“Cranes”), Daria Usacheva (“I like him”), Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin (“Tenderness”), Mikhail Kolyada (“Cuckoo”) , Maria Petrova, Alexei Tikhonov and their daughter Polina (“Dark Night”).
Averbukh revealed how he chose the compositions for the gala evening. “At the heart of the story is a certain family that writes letters to each other,” Ilya explained. – Of course, there are many songs dedicated directly to the Great Patriotic War, but I tried to have a different mood. There are songs like “Airplanes first…” because even in this story we dream of a peaceful life. It sounds “Tenderness” because even then people believed that space flight would happen, and it did happen. We remember the wonderful film “Only old men go to battle” – “Smuglyanka” also sounds. Of course, the topic is secondary, but I wanted to collect one energy, transfer it and not destroy it. That’s why I didn’t do two parts.’
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The show’s producer noted that there are many young skaters participating who will soon be vocal. Ilya suggested that this program could become an annual event. According to him, each of the athletes honestly lives this story. He talked about the peculiarities of staging a show on a military theme.
“The most difficult thing is for a person who conventionally “dances” on skates to look organically in any military song and in a military uniform, so that it does not become a masquerade and an attraction,” Averbukh emphasized. – This is a very difficult task, I try to cope with it in every issue. I really hope we can do it, because if the music, the designer, the costume – everything goes into dissonance, we get the opposite effect.
Actress Liza Arzamasova performed two songs by Bulat Okudžava at the ice show. Misha Tikhonov, a young figure skater from Donetsk, performed the song “Hope for a Small Orchestra”. The star of the TV series “Daddy’s Daughters” also sang the hit “Goodbye, boys”, under which Matvey Vetlugin, the bronze medalist of the Russian Cup final, presented his number.
Averbukh explained how he came up with the idea of inviting his wife to sing on the show. “I heard Liza play one of my favorite pieces on Bulat Okudžava’s poem – Hope is a Little Orchestra,” he admitted. – It’s very clever. When I heard Liza also sing “Goodbye, boys”, I realized that our gala evening could not be imagined without these songs.
The couple took their 1.5-year-old son Leo with them to work. The boy carefully watched his mother sing. Despite the late hour, the child did not fall asleep and watched the program until the end.
In the current difficult time for Russia, the ice show with military and lyrical songs looked incredibly poignant. Spectators remembered their loved ones – victims of the Great Patriotic War and participants in the current battles in Ukraine. Many had tears in their eyes. And yet the program proved viable – reminding everyone that every war ends in peace. As the captain of the “singing squadron”, the hero of Leonid Bykov from the same film drama, would add: “War is fleeting, but music is eternal.”