Champs’ Show Will Be a Feast for the Ice : Skating: The event, featuring Torvill and Dean, Brian Boitano and Viktor Petrenko, will provide an unofficial preview of the Winter Olympics.

Figure skating fans who can’t make the trip to next February’s Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, take note: Tonight’s performance of the Tour of World Figure Skating Champions, at the new Anaheim Arena, will provide an unofficial preview of the Winter Games.

Because of a 1992 ruling by the International Skating Union, professional skaters are now allowed to apply once for reinstatement as amateurs, paving the way for a return to Olympic competition years after their first time around.

Thus, this year’s world tour presents the newly reinstated 1984 Olympic and world ice-dancing champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean in the same show as current World dance champs Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin. Born-again amateur Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic and world champion, shares the ice with potential rivals Scott Davis, the current U.S. champion, and U.S. silver medalist Mark Mitchell.

“This world tour is unique from any other, because it’s a microcosm of what you’re going to see in the Olympics, and also the (World Figure Skating Championships) in Japan,” says Larry Sadoff, executive assistant to Tom Collins, the tour’s Minneapolis-based executive producer.

“We have most of the skaters who are going to be in the running for the gold, silver and bronze medals,” Sadoff said. The participants’ collectively have racked up some 45 medals.

Of the tour’s approximately 21 singles, pairs and dance acts (the roster changes somewhat from city to city), a full two-thirds will be trying to make their respective country’s Olympic team. The other newly reinstated amateurs--now called “eligible” skaters--are last year’s Olympic gold medalists: Ukrainian Viktor Petrenko and the Russian pair team Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev.

Those who have always been amateurs include this year’s World pair titlists Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler of Canada, ladies champion Oksana Baiul--a 15-year-old Ukrainian sprite who came out of nowhere to win the 1993 title in her first World competition--and the World silver medalist, France’s Surya Bonaly.

The U.S. roster includes current gold medalist Nancy Kerrigan, pair champions Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval, and silver pair medalists Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, who train in Costa Mesa.

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Six other singles and teams remain staunch professionals, including 1990 U.S. and World champion Jill Trenary and 1992 Olympic and World dance champions Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko. Among this contingent as well are 1979 U.S. and World pair champions Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, on the tour to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a pair.

Though the tour has played Los Angeles for more than two decades, this marks its first stop in Orange County, as well as the final stop on the two-month, 43-city itinerary.

“There hadn’t been a facility large enough,” Sadoff said. “But there’s a large population south of L.A. proper, so we felt it was important to include Anaheim on the tour. Especially with the new arena--we took a tour of it in February, before it was completed, and you could see that it was a most intimate facility.” (Relatively speaking, that is: the Anaheim Arena seats 16,334 for skating shows.)

The 2 1/2-hour show, which features group opening and closing numbers and is directed by Collins’ brother Harris, does differ from the Olympics in that it is an exhibition. There are no judges to worry about, and skaters have the freedom to use vocal music, props and flashy moves forbidden in competition.

At least one performer, though, is approaching the tour as a warm-up for the upcoming competitive season.

“The tour used to be a vacation for me,” says Boitano, 29, who will vie for one of two men’s spots on the Olympic team at the U.S. National Championships next January. “But now I’m trying to use it as a vehicle to get feedback on my short program.”

As to his feelings about possible rivals Davis and Mitchell, Boitano said: “I don’t feel any competition at all. I’m really focusing on myself.”

There may be behind-the-scenes tour tension of a different sort, though: Christopher Dean and his wife of two years, Isabelle Duchesnay, the 1992 Olympic dance silver medalist (with brother Paul), have recently separated, but are both performing in the show.

“That is their private lives, and it hasn’t impacted on the tour,” Sadoff said. “Everyone’s in a very difficult position, living in a fishbowl.”

If the emotional or physical rigors of touring do become too much, the skaters can work off steam at the Ping-Pong and pool tables that travel with the company.

At 35 and 33 respectively, Gardner, who lives in Marina del Rey, and Babilonia, who lives in Santa Monica, are the senior members of the tour, having first participated in the mid-1970s.

“It’s a lot more hip now,” Babilonia said; these days, the tour boasts a $500,000 lighting system designed by Neil Diamond’s lighting designer Marilyn Lowey, and a state-of-the-art sound system.

Their Southern California performances will be a homecoming: They grew up training in Santa Monica with coach John Nicks, now based in Costa Mesa.

“It’s always harder when you have friends and family in the audience,” Gardner said. “You care more, and you want to do well.”

* The Tour of World Figure Skating Champions takes place tonight at 8 at the Anaheim Arena, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. $25 and $40. (714) 740-2000.