Show-Runners Put a New Spin on Champions on Ice

The John Hancock Champions on Ice summer tour, which performs in Southern California today, Friday and Saturday, is skating its 21st edition with a new director and a crystallized sense of identity.

The latter developed through discussions between tour creator-producer Tom Collins and the show’s new director of staging-choreography, Sarah Kawahara, a Westlake Village resident who has worked on numerous arena ice shows and solo programs and in 1997 became the first person to win an Emmy Award for choreographing ice skating.

“The most important thing we established was to identify what Champions on Ice really is,” Kawahara says of the show, which presents about 20 exhibition numbers by professional and Olympic-eligible singles, pairs and ice dance performers.

“It’s not a production show. What it really is, is a concert. You have all these self-contained acts together. The lighting is a la rock-concert style; the music definitely has a contemporary edge.”

Kawahara instituted changes in the two group numbers, which had traditionally begun and ended the show by spotlighting each soloist or duo for 30 to 40 seconds. The opening now presents a stronger connection between the skaters, while the closing is a nearly nine-minute production number set to swing music by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Benny Goodman.

“I felt swing had a lot of variety as far as the rhythm and texture, and that it would be a great showcase for the individual talents we have,” she explains. “It’s brought the cast closer together, in that they have to work together, support each other, make picture frames for one another. They don’t just skate and get off.”

That cast includes current U.S. champion/Olympic silver medalist Michelle Kwan, world champion Alexei Yagudin, U.S. champion/world bronze medalist Michael Weiss, world pair champions Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, Olympic pair champions Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev, and Olympic bronze medalist Philippe Candeloro.

Olympic gold medalists Oksana Baiul, Victor Petrenko and ice dancers Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko also appear, as do Olympic silver medalist Elizabeth Manley, world champion Todd Eldredge and U.S. champion/world bronze medalist Rudy Galindo.

Kwan, 18, who is from Torrance and trains in Lake Arrowhead, is back for her sixth tour, performing to “One More Time” from “Message in a Bottle.”

“I love skating at home!” she says by phone from a tour stop in Miami. “It makes me a little more nervous, because all my family and my friends are watching, and I want to skate well. Everybody’s watched me grow up.”

Kwan, who enters UCLA as a freshman this fall, has discovered that skating the tour has been its own kind of education. “You constantly learn little things, about yourself, your body, traveling so many places. You’re able to be easily settled--sometimes if you go to a competition, there’s jet lag, you’re tired, but you have to adjust. We’re fortunate that we’re able to perform every night.”

Another six-tour veteran is fellow Californian Galindo of San Jose, who is repeating last year’s Village People medley at Collins’ request.

“People know what to expect,” says the openly gay Galindo, 29, whose on-ice persona and sense of humor have endeared him with fans, if not judges. “I’m not conventional at all. How boring would that be? I go for the glitter and the glamour. I’ve been different all my life--it’s also motivated me to have fun, to come up with something different.”

Galindo has seen changes in the show through the years. “I think people are starting to relate more to the audience, finding numbers that the audience can participate in,” he says. “And the cast seems more family-oriented this time, closer. I think it has to do with the closing number, people conversing, waiting to go on.”

In stark contrast to Galindo’s ebullience is the classically balletic performance of Baiul, to selections by Bach. Baiul’s much-publicized 1997 drunk driving accident and subsequent rehab have left the 21-year-old Ukrainian native introspective, but no less passionate about skating on this, her seventh tour.

“I want to die on the ice--that’s how much I want to skate,” she says. For her number, “I went for a very dramatic look: black-and-white. This is a very emotional piece--I’m talking about my life.”

That life is, she says, “so different on tour, now that I’m sober. It’s so much easier to run away from problems. But it’s so much better now. I’m back, working on myself every day.”

Baiul enjoys the show’s new closing number. “I like it better,” she says, “because it’s fun. We’re all skating together. And the audience loves it.”

BE THERE

John Hancock Champions on Ice, San Diego Sports Arena, 3500 Sports Arena Blvd., tonight at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$55. Information: (619) 224-4171 or Ticketmaster at (619) 220-8497.

Also the Pond of Anaheim, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Friday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30-$55. Information: (714) 704-2500 or Ticketmaster at (714) 740-2000. Also Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, 3939 S. Figueroa, Saturday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25-$55. Information: (213) 748-6131 or Ticketmaster at (213) 480-3232.