Ice Picks
Be dazzled by your favorite figure-skating stars in either - or both - of two shows coming to the coliseum
| Source: |
Fort Wayne News-Sentinel |
| Date: |
March 21, 2002 |
| Author: |
William Carlton |
The old guard and new wave of Olympic figure skating cut the ice in
two shows coming to Memorial Coliseum.
Sarah Hughes, Tara Lipinski, Michelle Kwan, Kurt Browning and many
other medalists won't have to worry about landing triple Lutz/triple
toe loop combinations, nailing quad jumps or griping about biased
judges.
The pressure's off. Their goal is to please the audience, not go
for the gold.
First in the rink is the annual Stars on Ice extravaganza on
Wednesday, followed by the Champions on Ice Olympic Tour 2002 on May
8. Ticket prices are chilling -- up to $55 for Stars on Ice and a flat
$65 for Champions on Ice -- but both are selling briskly, a coliseum
representative reports.
The 61-city Stars on Ice tour features veteran Olympic champs
Lipinski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Katarina Witt and Ilia Kulik, four-time
world champ Browning, and current world champ and six-time U.S. champ
Todd Eldredge.
Witt, the powerful German stunner who won back-to-back gold medals
at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, is rejoining the tour after a four-year
absence.
New to the tour are two-time world champion pairs skaters Anjelika
Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov. Three-time U.S. national pairs skating
champs Jenni Meno and Todd Sand are making return trips to the tour,
as are Olympic silver medalist and two-time world professional champ
Denis Petrov and eight-time British national champ Steven Cousins. The
"Queen of Spin," two-time Swiss national champ Lucinda Ruh, will turn
heads in her tour debut.
Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean -- who made the ice blush with
their steamy "Bolero" routine at the 1984 Olympics, en route to
getting nine perfect sixes for artistic impression -- are creating the
choreography with fellow Olympians Sandra Bezic and Michael Siebert.
Separately and together, these super skaters will explore themes of
inspiration and dedication (personal qualities without which they
wouldn't have gotten past the first round of their first competition)
and the mental challenges of stardom (which the rest of us
uncoordinated klutzes will never have to worry about).
The music will be a lot better than organ riffs from "Jaws" or
whatever they play with driving monotony when hockey players hit the
coliseum ice. Soft pop, hard rock and tempting tango will underscore
the figure skating.
Stars on Ice loyalists are still mourning the departure of its
founder, Scott Hamilton. The diminutive dynamo, who retired a couple
of years ago, has had cancer. He's said to be feeling well and keeping
busy doing TV commentary, speaking at cancer-related functions and
thinking of lacing up the skates for an ice show on Broadway.
The Champions on Ice tour's star attraction is Hughes, the
Cinderella of Salt Lake City. Ice skates became her glass slippers in
a fairy tale ending as she beat the heavily favored Kwan for the gold
medal.
Hughes will be joined on the tour by Kwan, who had to settle for
bronze after falling, and silver medalist Irina Slutskaya. On the
men's side of the 2002 Olympic medal winners, audiences will see the
athleticism and artistry of gold medalist Alexei Yagudin, silver
medalist Evgeni Plushenko and bronze medalist Timothy Goebel. Many
other Olympic crowd favorites are on the tour -- Sasha Cohen, Elvis
Stojko, Michael Weiss, Nancy Kerrigan, Nicole Bobeck, Rudy Galindo and
the American sweetheart of skatedom herself, Dorothy Hamill.
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