From Beyoncé to 'Corpse Bride' and 'Romeo and Juliet': Artistic swimmers get creative with their music selections
Drum-beating Amazonians, spine-tingling encounters with werewolves or moves that are simply ‘Unholy’? Olympics.com delved into the playlists of the artistic swimming competition at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships to uncover the main trends of the season.
Artistic Swimming
Ever wonder what Beyoncé and the Avengers would look like as artistic swimmers? Or how a psychological thriller could be told using rocket splits and twist spins?
The routines of this season’s top medal contenders in artistic swimming give us a glimpse at these surreal scenarios.
Gone are the days when most routines would be set to clean classical tracks. Now going to an artistic swimming competition can feel like getting a ticket to the trendiest concert. And if classical music is in the mix, it usually has ethereal undertones that give spectators goosebumps, with story lines also veering towards the mystical and the wicked.
Olympics.com hit ‘play’ and broke down the hottest musical trends in the sport, next on show at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka.
Pop stars in the pool: Making a splash with Beyoncé and Michael Jackson's moves
With artistic impression counting for almost half the score, artistic swimming is all about attitude and bold statements. And what could be bolder than Beyoncé?
Spain’s Iris Tio Casas tapped into the pop diva’s swagger by using "Tribute to Stevie Wonder" as the music for her new free solo routine, appropriately titled "Sexy".
The musical choice was a step outside of Tio Casas' comfort zone. Her parents are musicians and being a classical music connoisseur since she was a child, the 20-year-old athlete usually opts for tradition in her routines, as was the case with her technical solo, set to Gustav Mahler’s Symphonie Number 1 “Titan”.
This season, however, Tio Casas's routines underwent a dramatic Beyoncé-fication. She even studied videos of Beyoncé’s moves to be more convincing.
“I tried to put in Beyoncé’s flavour. Not just her, but a strong woman with character that’s having fun. I felt this was a super fun and expressive swim,” Tio Casas told World Aquatics after dazzling the home crowd in Oviedo at June's World Cup Super Finals.
“I really enjoy the parts where I’m out of the water, using my arms and looking at the faces of the judges, convincing them to give good scores. Maybe you don’t see it when I’m competing, but I’m a shy person. For me, this routine is to grow as a person, be more expressive and get me out of my zone of comfort and be better.”
Italy’s Filippo Pelati also chose an iconic diva to set the mood for his routine. The 17-year-old's free solo, titled “Mental Confusion”, is choreographed to a medley of Alicia Keys songs.
Spain's Fernando Diaz del Rio Soto went for a fresh feel for his technical solo with the 2022 hit “Unholy” by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, while Canada's acrobatic team rolled out a high-energy routine set to a medley of hip hop classics.
Digging deeper into the classics, USA's team paid homage to the "King of Pop" Michael Jackson with a technical routine set to "Smooth Criminal".
“I have loved him and his music ever since I was a swimmer myself," Andrea Fuentes, four-time Olympic medallist for Spain and USA's head coach, told Olympics.com. "We took the team to Las Vegas to see the show 'ONE' and everyone was instantly inspired. I knew it was the right team to use the song with.”
Fighting spirit: From the Amazons to the Avengers
The pulsing, powerful beats of pop music help the athletes to send a message to the spectators: They are fighters.
Warriors of antiquity are a common presence in the pool with Canada's Audrey Lamothe bringing a "Roman Gods" theme to life in her free solo set to music from HBO's Succession series, while USA's acrobatic team re-enacted "Amazons & Hercules" with the help of "Angry Dad Percussion" by Infraction Music.
“For our acrobatic routine, assistant coach Anna found the music when browsing a Spotify running playlist and came to the pool so excited to share," Fuentes said. "It’s powerful with drums and we decided to use the theme of Amazons which we thought fit the personality of the team."
Meanwhile, Canada’s mixed team debuted a more modern take on the fighters theme in June. Set to the original soundtrack from the movie Creed, the free routine starts off with the athletes throwing air punches and progresses to them doing crunches on the surface of the water.
“We really like to show our fight,” Sydney Carroll told World Aquatics after the routine debut earned them a bronze in the World Cup Super Finals. “We really went in with the spirit of giving it our all and fighting for it, just like the theme of our routine. We’re really proud of the fight that we gave. We’re a team that really wants to go for it – and boxing was the best way to portray that.”
Colombia’s Gustavo Sanchez went one step further to show the magnitude of his fighting spirit in the men’s solo event, embodying the superheroes from The Avengers in an aptly named “The End of the World” technical routine.
Goosebumps in the pool: Werewolves, witches and a corpse in a wedding dress
The characters in the pool are not always heroes. Quite often, they are the bad guys.
The Dutch women’s duet Bregje de Brouwer and Marloes Steenbeek transformed into werewolves to tell a terror fantasy in their free routine. Alexis Maldiney composed the music specifically for this number.
Spain’s mixed team also brought terror to the pool, performing to the Witches soundtrack for their free routine. Meanwhile, their teammates Dennis Gonzalez Boneu and Mireia Hernandez Luna set their mixed duet free routine to the eerie Angels and Demons soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith.
Kazakhstan’s mixed duet Nargiza Bolatova and Eduard Kim chose a spine-chilling theme for their technical routine as well, but added a love twist to it, performing to music from the animated dark fantasy Corpse Bride.
A ghostly Vivaldi: Classics with a twist
Giving their routines an eerie twist is something the artistic swimmers have done increasingly often in recent seasons, even when choosing classical music for their routines.
It is enough to hear the first beats of Boneu and Garcia's technical routine - set to the electronic music Vivaldi’s Winter by Dark Moor - to get chills.
The same dark undertones can be heard during Gustavo Sanchez and Jennifer Cerquera Hatiusca’s performances. The Colombian mixed duet chose "Golden Fists" by Brand X Music as the tune for their technical routine, titled “The Mystery of the Ocean”, while their free routine “The King and Queen” is told to “Tension” by Daniel Garuglieri.
And China's Shi Haoyu and Cheng Wentao opted for the greatest classic tragedy of all. Their new free routine for the mixed duet competition recounts the famed clash between the Montagues and Capulets with the music Michael Bruce composed for the 2021 film Romeo and Juliet giving a gothic feel to Shakespeare's masterpiece.
Konnichiwa, Japan: Setting the tone for the 2023 World Aquatics Championships
With Japan hosting the 2023 World Aquatics Championships from 14 to 30 July many of the newer artistic swimming routines also incorporate elements of Japanese culture.
Israel's mixed team went for a simply named “Japan” free routine, set to Japanese music, while Spain’s mixed team added a bit of its own culture - as well as a huge acrobatic move - into its "Japanese Flamenco" technical routine.
The Spanish women’s duet went one step further, mixing together the cultures of Spain, Japan and the United States.
Iris Tio Casas and Alisa Ozhogina Ozhogin portrayed baseball players in their energetic technical routine called "Let's play baseball", set to Ike and Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary”.
“It’s true that baseball is really an American sport, but it’s also hugely popular in Japan. With the World Championships being in Fukuoka this year, we do a mix of the American power routine with Tina Turner while also representing the most popular sport in Japan – baseball,” Ozhogina Ozhogin told World Aquatics after the pair won gold at the World Cup Super Finals.
The artistic swimming competition of the 2023 World Aquatics Championships is held from 14 to 22 July with 11 sets of medals to be awarded.