Russian Ice-skating Team Impersonate Aboriginals and Win

Russian ice-skating team Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin took the ice in what appeared to be brown tights with white designs painted all over them. The costumes were also decorated with leaves around their wrists and knees, ropes around their waists, and red cloth. The routine and costumes were, according to them, was based on traditional Aboriginal culture.

The actual routine itself is just kind of weird to me. Their shaking and convulsing as they glide across the ice. At one point, it looks like they’re fighting. They also keep touching each other’s heads (see photo above). It almost seems as if they will turn into something at any moment. The music itself, while it does contain a didgeridoo, was allegedly composed by Sheila Chandra, a Briton of Indian descent. It’s all a pretty scary scene as you can see from the video below.

An ice-skating routine based on Aboriginal culture has actually been done before back in 2008. Danielle O’Brien and Greg Merriman, from Sydney spent a year consulting with the Aboriginals to be sure that their costumes, music, and overall performance was respectful and accurate (video below). When asked how they performed their research, Domnina said, "We’ve watched video clips on the internet of these dances and it is really like this – complete with the leaves around the knees."

Looking up a few YouTube videos does not constitute valid research on a specific culture. Especially when you plan to do a performance on the world stage representing that culture. Domnina and Shabalin wowed the judges at their national ice dance competition and may be doing the same performance at the next Olympics. They defend their choice of performance, saying they meant no disrespect. They are completely unapologetic even though the music nor the dancing bear any resemblance to Aboriginal culture.

This is probably not something most of us would even know about without the power of YouTube and the Internet. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Will they be allowed to bring this questionable performance to the Olympics? Will they even understand why many are so upset about their performance? Is that brown face paint?!

Here is the recent performance by Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin

Here is the the 2008 performance by O’Brien & Merriman

h/t to Telegraph

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Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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