From: Sandra Loosemore Subject: Review: Ice Theatre of NY Newsgroups: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure Date: 6 Jun 1997 15:01:29 -0400 Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway Path: yale!news-mail-gateway!daemon Lines: 148 Sender: daemon@cs.yale.edu Message-ID: <19970606150055.aaaa0045G@babyblue.cs.yale.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: babyblue.cs.yale.edu Last night I saw this year's version of the Ice Theatre of NY's annual show, at the Chelsea Piers rink complex. Compared to last year's show, this year's show featured more short solo pieces and the ensemble pieces were not as lengthy or as complex. The first piece on the program was "Creative Time", an ensemble skated to strange music with percussion and chimes and later on some synthesized sounds. The "time" theme carried through the piece as the skaters formed a circular clock-like formation at center ice, and did a lot of rhythmic stiff-armed movements, like the hands of a clock. This piece didn't really strike :-) me as anything special. The next piece was "Metamorphosis", choreographed and performed by Lisa Clinton, with Jenni Janson standing on the ice in the background playing the flute. Lisa initially came out draped in a sheet, in which she wriggled around on the ice for a bit before emerging in a butterfly costume. Next up, Emanuel Sandhu skating to music from Cirque de Soleil. Emanuel is this year's Canadian junior champion, and he turns out to be another one of those CW boys with a great camel spin.... yeah, I think I'm in love! :-) He has very long legs and uses them well, with a spiral that's almost Toller-esque in its extension. According to the program, he also dances with the National Ballet of Canada, and you can see the results of the dance training in his carriage. OTOH, he's obviously still young and unpolished and in some instances seems a little gawky in his movements. It's going to be interesting watching this skater as he matures. The next piece featured Cam Millar skating around in hockey skates while playing a trombone. Last year this guy and his trombone were part of a much more complex ensemble piece, but this one was labelled as a work in progress, and it looked like it -- neither the skating nor the trombone-playing were particularly expert or interesting to me. After this came two excerpts from "Six Arcs of a Circle", choreographed by Beth Woronoff to music from Bach's solo cello suites. The first part was "Darkness". It started out with Greg Wittrock, wearing a mask and a strange costume with a black and purple cape, which he hung on a dressmaker's dummy on the ice before exiting the ice. Then, an ensemble of three women wearing dresses that looked like they were cut from grey plastic garbage bags came out and made various genuflections around the dummy, and then Greg came back out minus the mask (but wearing ghoulish makeup instead) to retrieve his cape. This was all very strange. The second part of this piece was "Lightness", a solo performed by Alizah Allen in a normal-looking yellow dress. This piece consisted of a lot of very fast and complicated footwork -- so much so that Alizah seemed to be having a little trouble keeping up with it -- and a couple of spins, but it was not at all weird like the first part. Next, Igor Pashkevitch performed a piece to music by Dire Straights that looked pretty much like a regular exhibition program he'd perform on tour or whatever. It didn't leave much of an impression on me; my notes are that he skated fast, did a two-footed triple lutz and a double axel, and was wearing black velvet pants and a loose black satin shirt. The next piece, "Passion", was a duet skated by Chika Maruta and Jonathan Stine to music by Michael Nyman. They were wearing cool-looking earth-toned velvet costumes for this one. This program featured a lot of dance lifts, which, combined with the opening and closing poses, made me think that it resembled a lot of Roca & Sur's work. After this, Ari and Akop did their "Blues Brothers" program yet again. I really think it's time for these guys to get some new material -- they did the exact same two pieces in last year's show as they did in this one. Maybe their unison is getting better than it used to be, that's about it. The first act ended with a choreographed piece for the Zamboni (OK, it was actually an Olympia). Yes, the Zamboni was out there doing loops, and something that looked like a back counter.... It was a lot of fun and got lots of cheers from the audience. The second act opened with "Strike Up the Band", a group piece choreographed by Lar Lubovitch to piano music by George Gershwin. I have to say that this piece was a disappointment, as it consisted of a series of very ordinary solos with basically no ensemble work or interaction between the skaters, and the only thing that made it identifiable to me as Lubovitch's work is that all of the skaters managed to do some weird spins at some point during the program. I remember that John Curry's company did an ensemble to this same music, and this version just didn't seem to add anything new. The next piece on the program, "In a Nut Shell", was one of the true delights of the evening. It was performed by Kenny Moir, who appeared in a red sweater with gloves and a scarf, looking very much like your average Joe Beginner out to skate on a pond. This was a lot like an adult skater's version of Debi Thomas's "Wanda Beazel" routine, but he played it perfectly straight all the way through, and using Mozart's clarinet concerto for the music added to the mood of severe dignity throughout. He started out having severe problems just staying upright on his skates, and progressed from there to some very stiff stroking and edges, a two-foot spin, and some tiny waltz jumps, and by the end of the program he managed a double salchow and a fast scratch spin as well as some nice edge work. The audience caught on to the idea immediately and responded with delighted cheers at all the appropriate moments. "Lady Skates the Blues" was Joy Thomas skating to Billie Holiday. Joy looked very slinky and long-legged skating this, but otherwise didn't leave much of an impression on me. Emanuel Sandhu was back skating to Tchaikovsy's "Serenade for Strings". This looked like a competitive short program to me -- it opened with a double axel/triple toe combination, had straight-line and circular footwork sequences, three spins, etc. Emanuel took a nasty fall on a triple flip but the program itself looked great. Chika Maruka was next with "Venus", a solo number with a Spanish flavor. She did a double salchow and double loop in this program, but her main gimmick seems to be that she's quite flexible, which she showed off with some spirals and a variation on a Biellman spin. The other thing of interest was that she was wearing a dress with a corset-style top that was so low cut I was wondering if she was going to pop out of it in some of those spirals. :-P Igor Pashkevitch came back to dance the Charleston in a flashy costume with a silver vest, striped pants, and red socks. This one was less of a vanilla exhibition program than his first number, and he certainly skated in the character of the music. Ari and Akop were next, doing more of the same old stuff. Yawn. The final work on the program was, I think, the real highlight of the show: "Appalachia Waltz", choreographed by JoAnna Mendl Shaw and Doug Webster. It was basically a ballroom-style dance piece for three couples: Judy Blumberg & Doug Webster, Alizah Allen & Jonathan Stine, and Katia Semoukhina & James Schilling. Judy & Doug had an extended solo piece in the middle, and during some of the ensemble parts they broke up into two groups of three or all six of them skated around in a circle. I can't claim to be an expert on such things, but it looked like the choreography used a number of typical western swing dance elements, and at one point it looked like they were quoting the Kilian choctaw sequence. Anyway, it was great to see Judy skating again, and Doug partnered her very effectively. I don't think the actual steps they were skating were of particularly high difficulty, but they had a nice flowing edge quality and the lifts they performed likewise seemed smooth and effortless. All said, it was an enjoyable show and well worth the trouble of getting myself down to Manhattan. (The getting home around 1:30 am is something I could do without, though....) -Sandra