He knows what costume he wants. He knows what jump order he wants. He makes a lot of the decisions on his own. You can’t say ‘no’ to that ever. You know, with music especially, because he is going to skate with conviction.
— World ice dance champion and choreographer Shae-Lynn Bourne,
cited by Jack Gallagher, Japan Times, published on January 19, 2021
Hanyu is one of the rare figure skaters who used to plan and create large parts of his skating programs himself. This includes the music selection and editing, global concept, costume design, and choreography, including skating patterns and the distribution of technical elements. This led to a series of technically and intellectually advanced, high-quality programs created over the last decade. The broad media coverage in Japan gave deep insights into their background and making, especially of Hanyu’s Olympic programs for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
The following articles give a more detailed view on the programs regarding their choreography and composition as well as the used translation techniques of the music to movements. The short program “Let Me Entertain You” was not performed at the Olympics, however, it has some unique features that are very interesting and valuable from an analytical point of view.
Programs of the 2017–18 Olympic season
Programs of the 2021–22 Olympic season
All images used in this article are embedded from the Wikimedia Commons library and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 or 4.0 license. For the copyright and licensing details, see licensing.
Yuzuru Hanyu Legacy 