Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned . . .
Approximately three years ago, when I was young and ignorant, I wrote a post excoriating Nikolai Morozov for choreographing what I viewed as an abomination: Elena Ilinykh/Nikita Katsalapov's Ghost. At the time, I took particular umbrage at the inclusion of spoken dialogue from the musical Ghost in the program, bemoaning how the inclusion of such dialogue was detrimental to the entire concept of "interpretation" in figure skating.
As usual, I was wrong. The ISU broke down the musical barrier between ice dance and the other disciplines last season by allowing the inclusion of lyrics and the spoken voice in general in all four disciplines. Of course, the majority of programs taking advantage of the rule change last year used verses from various songs, seemingly all taken from The Phantom of the Opera. For example: