2009 University of
Minnesota Women's Gymnastics v. Iowa State
- February 7, 2009
2009
University of Minnesota Women's Gymnastics v. Iowa State - Minnesota
Golden Gophers
1st
row: Kristin Furukawa, the team, Ana Balboa, Alexis
Russell, & Angela
Walker.
2nd row: Kendra
Elm, Angela
Walker, Briana
Jones, Angela
Walker, & Kristin
Furukawa.
3rd row: Carmelina
Carabajal, Ana Balboa, Jamie
Bullock, Alexis
Russell, & Kendra
Elm.
4th row: Carmelina
Carabajal, Yuri
Nagai, Lucy Ennis, the team,
& Kristin-Kendra-Carmelina.
Choreography
makes gymnastics floor routines beautiful, by setting gymnastics
elements and dance moves to music. Choreography takes a gymnast and
makes her a performer. Some schools retread
football fight songs. Or their floor music sounds like a defective
music player -- jumping and skipping through a minute and a half of a
poorly mixed collection of pop song clips from five years ago. And the
gymnast moves through her routine as if it were never practiced to
music. Maybe the motto at those schools is, "You're performing for
judges, not the crowd."
At other schools, like
Minnesota, the choreography is excellent --
the gymnast moves with the
beat of the music, and the music is selected to match her style. The
crowd is wowed. The
music is usually a smoothly blended instrumental from a recent film,
timed to the second the gymnast stops. Minnesota
co-head coach Meg Stephenson raises the bar on floor choreography,
finding the inner dancer in gymnasts. New dance moves are performed
each season, while successful elements from the repertoire of previous
gymnasts reappear. "That
was like Ashley Stanton or Alicia" or "That was like Judi's
floor" or "Didn't
Mindy Myhre do something like that?"
Some
say, "Dance like nobody is watching."
The
Gopher Women's
Gymnastics
team dances like everyone is watching.
