TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120390/1203460.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 115 lines

                                                                                SHOW BUSINESS, Page 98

A Spectacle for Thinking Adults


Two ex-Olympians head a hip, athletic ice show without Smurfs



    After Brian Boitano capped his amateur figure-skating
career in 1988 with a second World Championship and an Olympic
gold medal, the full range of options for professional skaters
was open to him -- to wit, Ice Capades or Holiday On Ice.
Signing with either established show, or with competing
vehicles, would have meant performing mostly for children, vying
for their attention with actors impersonating furry animals and
cartoon characters. It would have meant coping with fake snow
sifting from the ceiling and a clutter of chorus members on the
ice. Boitano wanted nothing to do with six-performance weekends
in the company of Snow White and the Seven Smurfs. "I didn't
want people to come see me and remember how good I used to be.
I wanted them to say I was good now. It can be pretty
depressing when Donald Duck comes onto the ice and gets more
applause than you do."

    So Boitano held out for two years while pondering how to
put together his own ice show nouveau: a romantic and
theatrical evening with a minimum of props and kitsch and a
maximum of athletic daring. Along the way came a TV special for
ABC and another for Home Box Office that won three Emmy Awards,
both starring his title-winning counterpart, Katarina Witt of
what was then East Germany. The TV shows taught Boitano that he
and Witt, although trained since early childhood as solo
skaters, could enjoy the different discipline of working as a
pair and, more important, had a chemistry that satisfied
audiences. Says Witt: "We both like to express feelings and live
within the characters and story. I think more about a character
when I'm with someone else on the ice, so the acting is better.
And we wanted to put together East and West." She became
Boitano's partner in the idea for a touring show -- though not,
as publicity suggested, off the ice. The combination had enough
appeal to launch a 29-city run last winter.

    Last week Boitano and Witt opened an all-new sequel with
shows in Portland, Me., Baltimore and Albany as the first of a
projected 25 cities. They were joined by 13 other skaters,
including former world champions Alexander Fadeev, Oleg Vasiliev
and Elena Valova of the Soviet Union, and Paul Martini and
Barbara Underhill of Canada. From the first otherworldly moment,
when the skaters emerge in near darkness, forming abstract
clusters and patterns to the accompaniment of a reverie about
skating by the 19th century writer Alphonse de Lamartine, to the
finale adapted from Carmen, in which a love-sick Boitano
seemingly stabs Witt with a glinting knife, this is an ice show
for thinking adults.

    The humor is hip and sometimes bawdy. In a talking blues
called Tom's Diner, punks and Valley Girls mingle with waiters
and commuters, while a pelvis-wiggling Boitano gooses every
woman in sight. Gary Beacom, whose skating blends performance
art and circus theatrics, does an uproarious first-act number in
which herky-jerky movements suggest every skater's nightmare:
impending spills onto the ice. In the second act Beacom crawls
and skitters like Spiderman, then skates from end to end of the
arena while encased in black, including a hood that blocks his
vision. Valova and Vasiliev join Underhill and Martini for a
campy imitation of peasant dances to a revved-up Slavic-sounding
recording called Morning Gymnastics.

    Some numbers, to be sure, are traditional. Fadeev does two
swooping solos to classical music in billowing black blouses,
both with back flips and swanlike dying falls. Martini and
Underhill electrify the audience with a smoldering duet to
Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers. Even the
conventional pieces are done as serious art and athletics, far
more demanding than in other ice shows and never lapsing into
cuteness.

    The discipline is doubly impressive because staging
conditions are spotty. In Baltimore, for example, the newly
poured ice was thin and brittle: in rehearsal, Boitano's skates
broke through to the concrete beneath. The length and
configuration of the ice vary from show to show, as do locations
of entrances and exits and placement of key lighting elements.

    For Boitano and Witt, moreover, skating together represents a
pragmatic compromise between getting an audience and pursuing
their true calling, solo performance. Says Witt: "We each have
two solos per show. But we also do partner skating, which is
totally different." The moves in pair skating are much closer to
dance and emphasize carrying and tossing the female partner
rather than individual jumps and spins. Thus the genre is at
once less athletic than what Boitano and Witt are used to and
far more athletic than what they can achieve together without
years of practice. Witt, who is not pushing herself as hard
technically as in competitive days, does not seem to mind much.
Boitano does. Says he: "People really like seeing us together.
But for me the challenge is still being out there alone. What we
do together is theatrics as opposed to athletics, and I have
always thought of myself as an athlete first." Boitano
alternately yearns to sing and skate on Broadway or to return to
the Olympics, assuming professionals are someday let back in.
Witt wants to act in movies.

    For audiences, these frets and cavils are imperceptible.
Witt and Boitano have not only talent but taste. In this tour,
they also have a triumph.