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The appeal of figure skating, it’s often said, lies in its singular mating of power and beauty, grace and precision. But don’t forget about the drama.
No, not the drama of spangled rivalries or scheming judges and coaches swathed in fur. But the excitement of the unknown: Will the boy in bum-enhancing tights land his axel? Will the girl dusted with paillettes hold onto her spin? Will the foxy couple tumble from their lift?
The audience hopes not — and, at the same time, secretly hopes so, too. At least a bit.
That enjoyable tension is heightened during “Holiday Ice Spectacular,” the show running through Jan. 4 in the Eldorado Hotel Casino Showroom.
Why? Because the skaters are performing their customary footwork, jumps, spins, lifts and tricks — at high speeds, on micron-thin blades — across a 45-foot by 30-foot patch of ice; a fraction of the size they’re accustomed to.
“There are close calls every day,” said Melissa Parker, the blonde-next-door female soloist and former U.S. National Team member and national collegiate champion. “Every day, I think I’m going off into the wings or over the edge.
“But it makes a good show.”
Indeed it does.
Skirts, flirts and pastry
During the 70-minute show (just long enough), the cast of 16 performs numbers that incorporate about two dozen or so classic and modern Christmas songs. “Holiday Ice” is family-friendly, but it’s not cloying, and there are adult touches (see the elves’ banter), and the undeniable pleasure of watching attractive bodies exert themselves in the chill.
The “Holiday Shopping” number features guys in bright argyle sweaters, girls in flirty pleated skirts and plenty of presents that get tossed ostentatiously back and forth. The cast jokingly calls the number “our Gap commercial.”
For “Country Christmas,” the girls appear in pony-patterned chaps that frame their shapely posteriors (but tastefully), while the guys step it in Western jackets with enough fringe to outfit Nashville, Branson and Dolly Parton’s road show.
The “Nutcracker Sweet” features a trio of sweets (the Boston cream pie appearing especially lickable), the Sugar Plum Fairy as a 10-foot bear in a pink tutu, and a lovely, extended performance (complete with spinning, one-handed lifts) by Gordon Willemse and Brianne Delcourt, former Canadian National Team members and a world-ranked adagio skating team.
Even Willemse, a solidly rendered fellow who lifts kittenish Delcourt as easily as he might a stray sequin, appeared a little winded at the end.
“I’m sturdy, but it’s a lot of fast skating,” he said. “A lot of tight corners.”
Theatrical ice
To celebrate the opening of the show, Willemse, Delcourt and Parker sat down the other evening for a tasting dinner at Roxy restaurant in the Eldorado. They were joined by leggy performance director Sabrina Crotenko and by Michael Chack, U.S. National bronze medalist and former U.S. National and World Team member.
The skaters shared tales from the ice and lustily cleared their plates of five courses created by chef Jakon Tolhurst: grilled baby octopus salad, lobster and diver scallops nestled in barigoule, tiny quail robed in crisp coats of deep-fried buttermilk, filet mignon and sweetbreads atop späetzle, and bracing cider sorbet.
Clearly, figure skaters have appetites, but perhaps that’s not surprising. They still train hard, they said, but differently than when they were competing as amateurs. Now, the emphasis is on performance, not on deploying a passel of triple jumps.
“A professional producer will say, ‘I need you to be cutesy; I need you to be dramatic.’ Chack said. “You can’t say, ‘That’s not my style,’
“What we do now is in a theater, not an arena so it’s more like acting,” Delcourt added. “You’re portraying a character. It’s very intimate.”
Language lessons
Sometimes, those portrayals get tricky. Several stars have appeared in shows in which they’ve had to perform in other languages. Think of “Kiss de Girl” from “The Little Mermaid” — but in Japanese.
“You learn the words, but you lip-synch,” Crotenko said.
Chack soon may be cast in shows that require him to perform footwork sequences while belting out songs in Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian.
“You keep your head down and move your mouth,” he said. “You say, ‘cantaloupe, watermelon, banana.’ That uses all the vowels.”
Chack, one of the first American men to perform quadruple jumps (sort of the 4-minute mile of figure skating), appeared to be the show’s unofficial spokesman. He didn’t attempt a quad during “Holiday Ice,” but he landed two triples during a jazzy “Jingle Bell Rock” number.
A decade after retiring from Olympic-eligible competition, Chack’s skating retains its crisp, snappy appeal, and his body is still lean and compact — like a sparkplug, but with better shoulders.
Not so racy
The cast performs “Holiday Ice Spectacular” eight times a week (twice on weekends, weekdays, dark Mondays). That’s a fairly relaxed schedule, Parker said.
“It’s almost a vacation. I was once in Japan, we had 30 shows in 11 days.”
The performance schedule and a smaller rink weren’t the only unexpected aspects of their Reno gig, the stars said.
“Our show is a family show, but when we first signed with the casino, because it’s a casino, we were under the impression it would be something sexy,” Delcourt said.
“Yes,” Chack added. “Snow Off-White.”
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