"Swan Lake on Ice" Happened at the Olympics Last Night

February 8, 2018

Pretty simple: It’s Swan Lake, but the lake is frozen. And you’re going to love it.

Last night saw the preliminary round of figure skating competition for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. And while I’ve always loved watching beautiful pairs skating (the ice-defying lifts! the perfectly synchronized port de bras!), one pair last night really stood out for me. Why? They skated really, really gorgeously to Tchaikovsky’s stunning music from Swan Lake, Act II.

While China’s Xiaoyu Yu (doing justice to those iconic swan arms) and Hao Zhang (a Chinese Siegfried? I’m buying it) only placed sixth out of ten teams, they get first place in my heart for giving us their extremely brief version of an extremely wintry Swan Lake. Elsa, what was your role in this?!

I know, I know, it’s not *actually* ballet. But such fun to see the music and the magic of the ballet world crossing over into international sports’ biggest event. Enjoy, bunheads.

[Video of last night’s competition is not yet available outside of NBC’s subscription services, so here’s Yu and Zhang skating their Swan Lake short program last year at the Skate America competition in Lake Placid, New York.]