Gold Medal Skater Hamilton Glides Into Production End of Ice Shows

Putting Scott Hamilton on ice is like putting a hungry spider monkey in a cage and then having 100 people wave bananas in front of it.

The monkey goes berserk, and so does the jockey-size Hamilton, the first of five champion figure skaters guest starring in Sea World’s “Celebration on Ice” show, which begins its 11-week run Saturday at 9 p.m. at the marine park’s Nautilus Amphitheater.

To appropriate musical accompaniment, Hamilton weaves a kaleidoscopic pattern of graceful glides, dizzying spins, rapid-fire pivots and jumps, and amazing splits and back-flips of the kind that helped him win eight consecutive national and world figure-skating titles since 1981, including a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics.

Hamilton will only skate on the thin ice of the outdoor Nautilus stage during the first and last weeks of the summer program, and then only in three of the 35-minute show’s 18 segments (including the finale).

But, as the “Celebration on Ice” producer, he says he will be there in spirit for each of the nightly shows running through Sept. 1. It marks Hamilton’s debut as a producer, a move he says he has been wanting to make for a long time.

“I’m sort of like a musician making my first album,” Hamilton said, as he prepared to take the ice Tuesday for a media preview. “Over the years, I’ve stored up a lot of ideas, a lot of concepts, and now I finally have a chance to try them out, to see which ones work and which ones don’t.

“For example, I’ve always thought doing a segment with something off Joe Jackson’s ‘Jumpin’ Jive’ album would be really terrific. So I took the song, ‘Five Guys Named Moe’ and came up with a challenge number in which two of the five skaters go back and forth, trying to outdo each other.

“And, in discussing the concept of the show with (choreographer) Sara Kawahara, we decided we didn’t want to have a lot of blackouts, so we came up with this segue idea of having a mechanical penguin ride around the ice on a tricycle.

“Throughout the show, we tell the audience to be on the lookout for an escaped penguin, and then when they see him loose on the ice between segments, it helps them feel like they’re a part of the show because they know something we don’t--they know where the penguin is, while we’re still looking for him.”

Other champion figure skaters scheduled to make guest appearances in “Celebration on Ice” are International Games gold medalist Katherine Healy (June 27-July 10), former Ice Follies star Richard Dwyer (July 11-24), 1984 Olympic silver medalist Rosalynn Sumners (July 25-Aug. 14) and 1980 Olympic bronze medalist Charlie Tickner (Aug. 15-28.)

They join a cast of 13 regulars--10 ensemble skaters, a duo, and comedian Terry Head--in visual interpretations of recent pop hits ranging from the romantic “Smooth Operator” by Sade and Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind” to the frenetic “She Blinded Me With Science,” by Thomas Dolby, and Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance.”

“There’s everything from soft ballads to electric funk, from New Age jazz to rock ‘n’ roll. And the mood of the music determines the actions of the skaters,” Hamilton said. “The entire show is very versatile, very intense, because our intent is to touch people.

“I want people to come here and see a show that isn’t only toe-tapping fun and humor, but an emotional experience that will leave them saying, ‘It made me laugh, it made me cry’--just like a good movie.”

Hamilton, who will be 30 in August, began skating as therapy when he was 9.

“As a child, I had this strange intestinal illness that caused me to stop growing for four years,” he said. “One day, my sister and my doctor’s family took me to a skating rink in Bowling Green, and I just kind of took it up because I liked it.

“The better at skating I got, the healthier I got, and, within a year, my illness had disappeared and I was growing again. At the same time, I began competing, first in the sub-juvenile division and then in the preliminary men’s and, finally, in the men’s.”

By the late 1970s, Hamilton had worked his way through local, regional and national amateur competitions to land a position on the U.S. Olympic squad, finishing fifth in the 1980 games at Lake Placid.

A year later, he won the World Figure Skating Championship title, clinched a Gold Medal at the national Skate America tournament, and was voted Male Athlete of the Year by the United States Olympic Committee.

Hamilton held on to his national and world titles in 1982 and 1983, and in 1984 he went to the winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, where he became the first American since 1960 to win a Gold Medal in the men’s figure skating competition.

He subsequently turned professional and saw his financial fortunes rise through a two-year stint on the road with the Ice Capades and, in 1987, a national arena tour with Stars on Ice, which he co-headlined with fellow Olympic gold medalist Dorothy Hamill.

Hamilton has also toured on his own and performed with theatrical figure skating troupes Festival on Ice and Concert on Ice, the latter drawing standing-room-only crowds at Harrah’s Hotel in Lake Tahoe during its five-week encore run last February and March.

“I’m in a different mode now than I was in the early 1980s,” Hamilton said. “Back then, competition was still the ultimate, but by the time I won the gold medal in 1984 I had pretty much had my fill and felt it was time to get into something else.

“So, right now, I’m at the point where I want to be as good as I can be, for as long as I can. I’m no longer trying to be the highest jumper, or the fastest spinner, because I’ve done all that. I’ve already broken every barrier I set for myself in sports, and now I want to develop myself more and more as an entertainer.

“I figure I’ve got maybe four or five good years left on the ice, and then I’m going to have to totally shift gears from performer to something behind the scenes, like producer or TV sports commentator. And with my current affiliations with Sea World and with CBS, I’m getting a head start on both.”

Whether he’s on the ice or off, Hamilton is elated to see figure skating’s popularity as a spectator sport continue to grow, year after year.

“When I did the amateur tour of Olympic champions in 1984, we sold out maybe 80% of the time,” he said. “Today, the same tour is one of the hottest tickets in the country, with every single show an instant sell-out.

“Figure skating has definitely become more and more popular in recent years, and, while part of that is the U.S. team’s success at the 1984 Olympics, an even bigger part is the quality of the shows themselves.

“There’s more integrity--more excitement--than there ever was before. It’s not just grids and Ziegfield, but amazing displays of technical abilities that you used to see only in amateur sports competitions.

“And, because of the theatrical aspect, you can draw out personalities and have a direct, eye-to-eye contact with the audience that you just don’t have in most other field and team sports.”