When Art Worlds Collide

It's an embarrassment of riches for skating fans this weekend with sectionals occuring coast to coast and competitors arriving in Portland to skate.... in America!

While you're planning your viewing schedule between IceNetwork, Universal Sports and Skate Buzz on top of checking blogs, take a few minutes to watch this gem from the mid-90s. My "Today In History" iPad app says today was the day sculptor Auguste Rodin was born back in 1840. Why do I bring this up? Gordeeva and Grinkov skated a program in the year after their 2nd Olympic win that was inspired by Rodin's sculpture, The Kiss. Art inspiring art. The program was choreographed by Marina Zoueva, who is one of the coaches for ice dancers Davis & White who you can see tangoing away at Skate America this weekend.

 Enjoy!

I smell some cheesy skating made for TV

ABC announced recently that after this season's Dancing With The Stars ends, the network will debut Skating With the Stars. My first thought, "OK, this is cool, professional skating on TV that's not a Disson Skating Production." My second thought, "Yeah, but it's professionals skating with people who can't skate."

I painfully watched several shows of Skating With Celebrities on Fox four years ago. It came on just before the Torino games and by the opening ceremonies I gladly ditched Skating With Celebrities. The only teams that did well were those with a male pair skater as the pro who could lift the skater. The other teams basically showed how difficult it is to learn to skate. Plus, the celebrities were way below the D-list and when you've got the Olympics on, even casual fans and channel flippers are going to select the Olympics over Todd Bridges and Debbie Gibson doing swizzles in sequins. The show fizzled out with the swizzles and went to the place TV shows go to die.

However, skating with stars/celebrities and other shiny, happy people have been quite successful in other countries. Torvill and Dean have Dancing On Ice in Britain, Katarina Witt did a show in Germany, there's been one in France and Russia has had several seasons of a shiny, happy people paired with skating greats. From what I've read of the Russian show on blogs and forums, it's as big as Dancing With The Stars is on ABC in the US.

I think the coolest shiny, happy people and professional skater show is in Canada, Battle of the Blades. This show combines female figure skaters with male hockey players. I think it works by that dynamic of bringing hockey and figure skaters together with the benefit everyone can skate. Way more to watch great skaters do something new and fun instead of people trying to learn to not wobble on skates while trying to bust a move. This way, you get the lifts and get to see big, tough hockey dudes having to groove to the music. I think it would be even cooler if the Canadian show threw in some female hockey players like Manon Rheaume and Cammie Grannato with a male figure skater. That would rock and chicks can play hockey too!

So I'm curious how ABC will pull this off. If they will have pro skaters that can lift the chicks. Or if they will go more of a dancing route and not worry about overhead lifts and do more adagio pairs skating. Whatever the model I think they should try to pull from those shiny, happy people with skating backgrounds. Keanu Reeves was a hockey player, I think I've read Rachel McAdams was a figure skater. Wasn't there a Miss USA contestant recently that was a competitive skater? Oh, what about Vera Wang? How sweet would that be? Get some celebs that would be rusty with their skating skills in the mix that would make it more fun. Vera Vang and Keanu Reeves... on ice. Nice.

So this is NOT Vera Wang or Keanu Reeves skating. It's the lovely Katia Gordeeva who is as timeless, elegant and put together as any Vera Wang piece skating with Valeri Bure on this season's Battle of the Blades. You're welcome. =)



Anyone want to share their thoughts on the possible "Stars" as well as the skating pros?