Artistry in Women's Floor and Beam: What Judges Assess

Artistry in WAG isn’t a separate score — it’s assessed as part of execution, most visibly on floor and also on beam.

What the Code means by artistry

The 2025–2028 WAG Code of Points opens its beam and floor sections with a description of artistry in two parts:

• Composition — “what” the gymnast performs: a rich and varied selection of elements, changes of level (up and down) and direction (forward, backward, sideways), changes of rhythm and tempo, and creative movements and transitions, balanced into “a continuous flow, a cohesive whole”.
• Artistic performance — “how” she performs it: creativity, confidence, personal style, technique and varied rhythm and tempo, which the Code says can transform a well-structured composition into an artistic performance.

The FIG publishes an artistry checklist for beam and for floor in the Code’s appendices, which judges use alongside the deduction tables.

Floor: performance, musicality and choreography

The E-judges’ artistry and composition deductions on floor cover:

• Artistic performance — poor posture, poor footwork, insufficient amplitude of movement, insufficient involvement of the body, and insufficient complexity of movement.
• Musicality — poor expressive engagement with the style of the music, lack of connection between the music and the exercise, and lack of synchronisation between movement and beat at the end.
• Music — poor editing of the music.
• Composition — poor choreography or lack of variety in the corners, and no movement touching the floor (at least the trunk, thigh, knee or head).

The Code also deducts for how tumbling is placed — starting immediately with a tumbling pass, ending on a tumbling element with no choreography afterwards, or running consecutive passes along the same diagonal without choreography between. The music itself must be instrumental; the voice may be used only without words. See women’s floor.

Beam: posture, rhythm and use of the beam

On beam, the deductions cover:

• Artistic performance — poor posture, insufficient amplitude, insufficient involvement of the body, low leg swings and kicks, and poor footwork.
• Rhythm and tempo — insufficient variation, and elements that feel disconnected rather than fluent.
• Composition — a mount without difficulty value, insufficient use of the whole beam (no sideways movement, or no movement close to the beam with part of the torso touching it), and one-sided use of elements, such as too many half turns on two feet.

Beam also has specific execution deductions for pauses, excessive preparation and extra balance movements. See women’s balance beam.

Why it matters

Because artistry deductions come off the same E-score as technical faults, a routine performed with hesitation, flat expression or little use of the beam or floor can lose marks without a single technical error. See the E-score.