Artistic Program

[hopskipjump]

How would you define dramatic artistic program?  How does it seem different from a freestyle program?  (USFS).

[nicklaszlo]

I have never tried it, but my understanding is a dramatic program is judged on its entertainment value rather than technical content.  It is not supposed to be funny, because that would be a "light entertainment" program.  The rulebook says each competition is supposed to define the event in the competition announcement.

[techskater]

I would define it as a program intended to draw an emotional response through the creative use of movement that is not comedic.

[singerskates]

An artistic program is similar to our Canadian interpretive program, in where you skate to the melody notes, under melodies trying to convey the program's meaning through steps, turns and body movements using the entire body low to the ice, normal stance and in the air without doing more than a half rotation in the air on jumps. It's to skate as close as possible to each nuance of the music with the skating skills you possess. Unlike US and maybe ISU style interpretive programs, it is frowned upon to do more than half rotation non-listed jumps in your interpretive program and can possibly make the judges think that you are skating a free skate program instead and result in very low interpretive marks. In Canada our interpretive programs are marked using the CPC's PCS marks.  

[hopskipjump]

Thank you!  It is hard as a non skater to know what I'm looking at....many freestyles seem "dramatic" and many artistic programs look like freestyles.  There seems to be a line between campy and overly done and under-done.  When I google program videos I see a lot of high level skaters but not a lot of pre-pre skaters - and a high level skater and pre-pre don't really compare. 

The descriptions you gave help!

[Sk8tmum]

Yeah, and I like the commentary in the Canadian interpretive manual that it's not supposed to be about dolls coming to life or magical fairies ... and judges keep trying to get it across to people that it's not supposed to be about acting out lyrics ... the best test sheet we ever got was clearly from a judge who is frustrated with too many pop ballads being turned into heavy emotive pieces ... the comment was simply, THANKYOU for not skating to a Song Title!