Kat with a K

Erik or Raoul?

As I posted yesterday, my favorite ice dancers, Meryl Davis and Charlie White, skated to music from The Phantom of the Opera in their free skate. There was some discussion around Twitter as to whether Charlie was skating as Erik (the Phantom) or Raoul (the, uh, non-Phantom guy). I thought he was Erik, but I wasn't sure, so I asked Rachel, my on-call Phantom expert, to watch it and give her ruling. Here's what she said:

Wow, that was fantastic. I'd say he's Erik (the Phantom). There's definitely a feeling that he's alternately wooing/abducting her. He's *dressed* more like Raoul, and I have a hard time getting past the fact that he looks more like a pot-smoking college sophomore (I can NOT get used to the way guys wear their hair these days) than either a French nobleman or a tuxedoed and emotionally tortured musical and mechanical genius, but IMO his role is Erik. They don't even include "All I Ask Of You", which would have made it a harder decision since that's Raoul and Christine's major song together. All their songs were Erik songs.

And in case you somehow missed it: