A Spectacle for Thinking Adults

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

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.