new interview of Jana and Sergej in English .. finally
Jana Chochlova/Sergej Novitskij Interview after Russian Nationals in St. Petersburg, January 2008
Q: Heading into Europeans you are serious medal contenders. What is your approach for this event? Jana: As always we’ll prepare seriously. We’ll work on the Compulsory Dance (Yankee Polka) because we didn’t have much time to prepare it (they skated other dances in their Grand Prix events). I think it will be even more of a psychological battle. You have try not to get nervous and to worry, but to get out calmy and to skate well.
Q: How do you deal with nervousness? You said in an interview a few years ago that you are always very nervous when competing. But now your coaches said that you are on the opposite very calm and that you are actually in competition even better than in practice. Jana: We are probably indeed “plus start”.
Sergej: Our approach to competitions just has changed and so we are a bit calmer now. I think our attitude has changed, and we have competed internationally so much now. We are probably growing.
Jana: Now we know how to prepare mentally, how to approach the competition, how to calm down. There is no panic anymore! The more competitions there are the better it is. You get the experience.
Sergej: That’s almost like driving a car. It’s a difference if you’re sitting behind the wheel for the first time or if you’ve driven for a year.
Jana: But I think that we weren’t too nervous even at our first Worlds. Of course, there was this feeling, wow, we’re at our first Worlds now, but maybe it even helped us and distracted us a little from the competition itself.
Q: Actually you even competed at the Olympic Games before going to Worlds for the first time. This is the biggest event of all. Jana: To be honest, I even now don’t completely realize what happened at the Olympics and that they are once in four years and it’s a once in a lifetime chance for many athletes to compete there, not even to talk about winning. When we got there as the third team, we were just happy. Only now we start to realize that it was cool to be there and that we made it.
Q: Plus you skated well. Jana: Yes, it wasn’t bad for our debut.
Q: You have a good chance to medal at Europeans, but what are your plans for Worlds, how do you want to fight with the North American couples? Jana: I think we are able to compete with them at the same level. They are strong and worthy competitors. When you look back they got the highest levels for their footwork already last year. They do the steps really well. But we’re now also putting a lot of emphasis on the technical side of our programs. Our step sequences are really focusing on the technique this year. I think if we’re a skating cleanly, then we can with our lifts and spins compete with them on the same level.
Q: You already got some level fours for your footwork this season and had a high technical score, but the components were lagging a bit behind. Jana: This is still the second mark. There is some talk that we are the “second” (Russian) couple. This is up to the judges.
Q: Will you work even more on the second mark? Jana: Yes, of course. Now that we feel confident about our technique, we want to skate with more emotions. We still can add something. We’re just now working on that with our choreographer and we think that we can do something before the Europeans. There wasn’t just much time between the competitions before. There is not so much time before Europeans either, but we’ll try to get the maximum out of it. We’ll also work on the character of the Original Dance.
Q: You are working with new choreographers. Jana: Yes, we have two new people. Tatiana Vladimirovna Stepanova started working with us not long ago. She is helping us on the ice, is working with us on our programs. Unfortunately we didn’t have time yet to work with her on the free dance, only on the Original Dance, and this happened just before Japan (NHK Trophy). We’ve worked with her for a week, and we felt very positive about it. We like to work with her. The second choreographer is Viatcheslav Kotchmarovov (spelling unclear). We are working on the expression with him. He is teaching us Yoga, stretching, and he is also a very good teacher. We are very pleased to work with him.
Q: Do you know where they come from, from ballet maybe?
Jana: She (Stepanova) has been working with figure skaters for many years. She has been involved in the sport for a long time, like (Liudmila) Vlasova, (Elena) Matveeva. Our coaches decided to invite her to work with us.
Sergej: She has a style of her own. Each choreographer has his or her own style and has a different approach and technique. I’ve met a lot of choreographers, but they were all different.
Jana: She is challenging us. We are saying, “no, this is not possible”, but she says, “you can do that, go and do it”. So it’s a quite strict approach, but that’s for the better. Sometimes that is what we need.
Q: You have very strong programs this year, but do you also think already about what is coming next? Sergej: It will be hard indeed to find something after this program (this year). Honestly, we didn’t yet think about it. Maybe we’ll do a Chinese dance (laughs).
Q: Anyway, how easy or difficult is it to switch from one style to another? Sergej: In the beginning you’re usually listening to the music, and you see if you like it or not and what you are feeling inside. When you are listening you are imaging what you can do on the ice. When they (the coaches) switched on this music (Night on Bald Mountain ), we were hooked right away. That was it.
Jana: In this case it’s not so difficult (to switch to another style). The coaches help to create the image. We are used to the fact that they are watching us from outside and they wouldn’t take music that wouldn’t suit us, our style, our character. When they think that we have to change radically, we’d be ready for that.
Q: What about your fans? Are they different in the different countries? Jana: In general we have quite a lot of fans and a grateful audience in all countries. I was impressed about the number of fans in Poland last year (at the European Championships). Obviously many people speak Russian and they approached us and encouraged us. I didn’t expect that it would be so many people. We have very grateful fans Japan. I can’t really single out one country, but in Japan we received many letters this year.
Sergej: We traditionally have fans in Japan as we’ve travelled many times to the NHK Trophy, I think we went four times to the NHK Trophy and the fifth time to Worlds which was in Japan , and we always get a lot of presents, cards and letters.
Q: What was the most unusual present you’ve gotten from your fans so far? Sergej: I got socks in Japan . I wear them. They have fingers for each toe.
Jana: We have one fan, who works in a bakery and each time she presents us with delicious cakes. This year, I also got earrings and beautiful tights. I wore them at the banquet.
Sergej: Many fans give us photographs in frames, very nicely done.
Jana: We’ve got so many letter where people are asking for an answer and we feel sorry that we just don’t have the time to do that. We’d really like to answer, because we’re really grateful for the support, love and attention of the audience. But really, you need time to do that.
Q: What are you doing with all the stuffed animals you receive? Jana: I usually keep the dogs. When there is no more room in the appartement, they move to the summer house. Many soft toys I collect and give to my grandmother who takes them to an orphanage. Once in half a year, she picks up some big bags with toys.
Sergej: And I give everything to Jana.
Q: You probably have even less spare time than before. Sergej: We have some spare time on Sundays.
Jana: Half the Saturday and Sunday.
Sergej: With our (training) schedule it’s almost impossible to find some free time during the week.
Q: Do you still have to train in various places like you used to do before? Sergej: No, we’re training only in Sokolniki now.
Jana: We’ve got very good conditions there. We’ve two hours on the ice in the morning and in the evening. We’ve room for off ice training and choreography. During the break we sleep on the benches.
Sergej: They now promised to put a couch into the judges room. Then it will be comfortable!
Q: How did you celebrate New Year’s Eve? Sergej: At home. I went to bed at 1 (a.m.)
Jana: I went to bed at 4 in the morning. We had some fireworks.
Q: How Sergej’s knee doing? You had surgery in 2006 (after Worlds). Jana: It’s fine, just sometimes he feels it when the workload is very high.
Sergej: There is always something crackling inside as if they didn’t finish the job. Sometimes it hurts. I can’t say that it became that much better, but it’s not really disturbing me.
Jana: I watched the surgery. It was interesting and I wanted to support him.
Older interview from Trophee Bompard, November 2007
Q: What are your goals for this season? Jana: Our first goal was to change our style, of course to improve our technique and as usual, to think of something that sets us apart from the other couples. We dedicated a lot of time to the technical aspects of our programs.
Sergej: In short, our goal is to skate better than we did last season.
Q: Who had the idea for your “Walpurgisnight” free dance? Jana: It was the idea of our coaches, and we liked it immediately. The music (“Night on Bald Mountain ” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King”) is rather well known, but we have an unusual arrangement. I think it was the right choice.
Q: What about your Original Dance? Sergej: We chose the gypsy music, because we just without any second thoughts put together an exhibition number to gypsy music and everybody liked how we went into character. Therefore we decided to use gypsy music for our Original Dance.
http://www.figureskating-online.com/pageID_5411688.html
I've translated. 
Извини,что на тебя свалился груз такой.Ведь я,так сказать,обещала перевести..
now im going to translate it to our site 
and want to see their argentine tango 
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