Video Interview

Ekaterina Bobrova/Dmitri Soloviev Mai 2014

 

Katia: Hello everybody!

Dima: Hello. Katia Bobrova.

Katia: Dmitri Soloviev.

Dima: We are very happy that we could almost fully recover from my injury, I am healing it. Now we are working on our choreography. I think that injuries and these mistakes that we made in previous seasons won’t happen anymore.

Katia: We learn from our mistakes. Now we are preparing for the next season. We are actively working on our programs. The free dance will be to the music “Anna Karenina” from the American movie. We are really pleased with this choice, we really like the music. Now the programs are mounted, also the short dance. The short dance is the Paso Doble as everybody knows. Now we’ll take a short rest and get back into the battle.

Dima: So we hope to surprise you with some new lifts and elements, ideas and transitions and hairstyles… (smiles and looks at Katia)

Q: Will you keep this color, Katia?

Katia: I will experiment some more and will be a little darker, but right now basically the coaches and everybody likes this color. We’ll see.

Dima: I think it should be a little darker.

Katia: I might be a little darker and then return to this color, I’ll play around.

Dima: There is still time for that.

Q: Is it especially for Anna Karenina?

Katia: Actually for the Paso Doble, it is unlikely that someone saw a blonde Carmen.

Dima: It is Spain after all, there should be such a fateful woman with dark hair.

Q: How do you like the Paso Doble, that rhythm and this dance?

Katia: Now we are getting into this dance as a compulsory dance. It is not the easiest dance, but it is nevertheless interesting for us. We skated it as the usual compulsory dance, but now with these key points and the new creative series it will be very interesting.

Dima: I really like the character of this dance. It is such a serious, strict dance, it has its own style not like anything else. I like to bring out of myself these new emotions, to learn something new. Something is working out already and it should be fine. I think it will be very interesting in this season, and many couples will have interesting dances.

Q: How did you choose Anna Karenina?

Katia: (to Dima) Who suggested it? Who found it?

Dima: This was…

Katia: … a collective idea.

Dima: You can say, a collective idea was born, Alexander Viatcheslavovitch (Zhulin) had this idea and I also suggested it. Somehow we decided together.

Katia: And I just liked it!

Dima: Katia liked it. The music really is beautiful. On the one hand it is very calm, on the other hand it stirs up strong emotions of love and passion. It should work well.

Katia: There was a lot of music on the soundtrack actually and it was quite an effort to put it together for us. But eventually it came out well and hopefully this time we won’t change our music and program during the season.

Q: Indeed, last season the choice of music didn’t go so well. What was the reason?

Katia: It was just our second season with Sasha (Zhulin). In the first season, we just hit it right and apparently Sasha had the idea for this dance for a long time and we had this material that he gave to us and we also felt the energy but something didn’t work out for us and in our team. Maybe we didn’t develop it enough. Sometimes it just happens.

Dima: I think it was off the target of the season, it was just a total miss. Overall it was our mistake and it is hard to say. Now we probably can analyze this season and we know on what we have to work on. We are now a perfectly co-ordinated team and know where these mistakes come from. Therefore this was just the preparation for the Olympic Games in Korea. Into Korea we’ll go with full armour and we’ll know already which kind of errors we can’t make and on what we have to work more. Actually we have to work on everything more.

Q: What are your goals for the season?

Dima: The goals are very positive. First of all we want to do something new. The first season when we went to Alexander Viatcheslavovitch people didn’t recognize us and we would like that this will happen again with each season, that we change each time and do something new, new ideas, new lifts, new spins, new transitions, new programs, new artistry, that we put on new masks.

Q: Ice dance in Russia is always very competitive. After the season a lot of pairs have split up and there are many changes. Will this take off the pressure from you or motivate you further?

Dima: We never felt pressure because of the competition before we go out and compete. Yes, competition is always nerve-wrecking, on the other hand it is always good, in a good sense it does…

Katia: … push.

Dima: Push, yes. Therefore for us it does not mean any change.

Katia: Only…

Dima: We will just work completely differently as I said we have analyzed the season and we know what to do. We are not planning to look left or right.

Katia: On the other hand it will be very interesting to see the next season. There are changes in judging and in the rules and the leaders are changing. Therefore it will be very interesting.

Q: Thank you, Katia and Dima.

Katia: Thank you.

Q: Good luck to you.

Dima: Thank you and see you soon.