It’s time to announce my Olympic season programs!

My short program is to  “El Tango de Roxanne” from Moulin Rouge sung by Jose Feliciano. It was choreographed by Mark Pillay.

After watching 2010 Olympic Champion Evan Lysacek skate to this piece at the Smucker’s Skating Spectacular at U.S. Championships in 2011, I instantly fell in love with this music and ever since then I’ve always wanted to skate to it. However, in the back of my mind, I kept telling myself that I probably couldn’t live up to the intensity of the music; hence, I never brought up that I wanted to skate to it to anyone. Fortunately, and unfortunately, it was a huge struggle for me to find something I wanted to skate to, especially being the “Olympic year,” so out of desperation I decided to put this idea out there. Surprisingly, everyone loved this idea and so my short program for this season is born!

My free program is to Carmen Suite after Bizet’s Opera by Rodion Shchedrin. It was also choreographed by Mark Pillay.

Like the short, it was extremely difficult for me to pick a piece that I really loved, since I would have to skate to it for such a long time and listen to it every single day. Originally I was going to skate to Tosca. However, after the program was done, a week later, I felt that the “spark” never really really lit up. I felt the need to find something better, something that motivates me. And that’s when I came across Carmen. At first I was skeptical, but I really feel that I could make this special and interpret it my way so that it would be my own version of Carmen.

Can’t wait for you to see my programs this season!

— Karen