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Kerrigan skates into Springfield
| Source: |
The Republican |
| Date: |
October 5, 2006 |
| Author: |
Pat Cahill |
There were times in her career when her audiences were at the edge of
their seats, gasping as she vied for championships.
But these days figure skater Nancy Kerrigan says she hopes people will
just sit back and enjoy the ghosts and goblins in her touring show,
"Halloween on Ice."
She describes the show, scheduled for Sunday at 4 p.m. at the
MassMutual Center in Springfield, as "a couple of hours of good family
fun.
"It's very entertaining," said the two-time Olympic medalist, who was
in Springfield last week, "and very theatrical."
The show comes with a slew of celebrity skaters whose names will be
familiar to fans of the Olympics and other televised skating
events.
Irina Slutskaya, Kurt Browning, Todd Eldredge, Shae-Lynn Bourne, Jozef
Sabovcik, Steven Cousins and Dan Hollander have enough medals between
them to put Fort Knox to shame.
What a live performance gets across that TV doesn't, says Kerrigan, is
the tremendous speeds at which the athletes skate.
The New Age group Mannheim Steamroller will be providing the spooky
music. Tickets to "Halloween on Ice" are $13 to $98.
The MassMutual performance will be filmed and broadcast nationally on
NBC on Oct. 28 at 4 p.m.
With her long hair, blue eyes and Katharine Hepburn cheekbones,
Kerrigan is just as stunning as she was 12 years ago, when an
unfortunate incident brought her more fame than she bargained
for.
On the way to the 1994 Olympics, thugs associated with rival Tonya
Harding tried to break her leg. Kerrigan was already an Olympic
medalist and a favorite for the gold, but the shameful attack made her
a household name around the world.
She recovered and went on to skate in the Olympics that year, where
another drama unfolded in the form of the nail-biting competition with
the sylphlike teen-age orphan Oksana Baiul, who ultimately won the
gold medal.
The result of all that exposure was that Kerrigan had all kinds of
options after the Olympics were over - and all kinds of headaches from
the press.
If she was tired and yawned in public, "they said I was rude," she
recalls. They also misrepresented the so-called rivalry with
Baiul. "She was a 16-year-old and I was 24," says Kerrigan. "She was a
little girl!"
After her silver medal, Kerrigan posed for a cosmetics ad, wrote a
book, "Artistry on Ice," lent her voice to an animated movie, starred
in TV specials, toured with an earlier version of "Halloween on Ice"
and, with her husband, bought an ice-skating theater in South
Carolina.
She has a show on the CN8 channel (Sundays, 10 p.m.) for half the
year. And she still performs.
But ask her how she wants to be described today, and Kerrigan says,
"Just 'Mom.'"
She is married to her former coach, Jerry Solomon, and has two sons,
9-year-old Matthew and 17-month-old Brian.
"I love being a mom," says Kerrigan. "I've wanted to be a mother since
I was 10."
Earlier in her life she was doing 90 to 120 shows a year. Now she does
three or four.
She and her husband have also hired a producer to coordinate the
"Halloween on Ice" tour, which they used to do themselves.
"When you have a fourth-grader," says Kerrigan, referring to her son
Matthew, "you don't want to skimp on the attention you give
him."
Kerrigan started skating at age 6, after accompanying a friend to an
ice rink down the hill from her home in Stoneham.
Thirty years later, she lives less than 10 minutes away from her
parents. She also has two brothers.
"Halloween on Ice" started out as the kind of skating show where
everyone takes turns doing a three-minute routine, says
Kerrigan.
She decided that she wanted something more theatrical. She and her
husband hired author John Michael Williams to develop a story line,
and asked Lee Ann Miller ("a great choreographer") to design the
dancing for it.
The result is that each performer in "Halloween on Ice" stays in the
same costume, playing a single role. That way, says Kerrigan, the
audience gets to know the character.
That's what Kurt Browning loves about the production. He plays a
"sloppy, floppy, goofy, silly" character named Scarecrow all through
the show.
"I've had such a good time," said the four-time world figure skating
champion in a phone interview. "It is so much fun to break the
boundaries of what you expect to see from a skating show."
Browning, 40, says the competitive part of skating is no longer
important to him. In fact, lately he has been doing choreography, so
he's concentrating on making other people look good.
Still, he says, "I make sure my jumps are athletic."
Browning grew up on a farm in Caroline, Alberta, population about
500. "Now it's probably 600," he quips. When the town got an enclosed
skating rink, it was a big deal.
Browning got his first figure skates at age 11.
He says the skating world has changed a lot from what it was
generations ago. "The whole idea of a professional figure skater being
able to make not only a living, but a good living, was unheard of back
then," he says.
He remembers when the United States started "booming with big figure
skaters. I got to ride in their private jets. I'll tell you the truth,
it was very exciting."
Ten years ago Browning married Sonia Rodriguez, a principal dancer in
the National Ballet of Canada, who grew up in Madrid, Spain. They have
a son and, like Kerrigan, Browning says he his glad to have more time
with his family.
At his peak he was touring for seven and eight months at a time. Now
"summer is very quiet, and in September you start getting on
airplanes," he says.
Browning is memorable for his cool moves to rock music, dancing with
humor and mock swagger between explosive spinning jumps. But he
insists he was never much of a dancer off the ice.
"When I do try to dance, my wife is always, like, 'Stand back, he's
gonna hurt someone!'" says Browning. "I have lots of energy, and
sometimes I don't know where to put it."
Now he has embarked on a career as a commentator on ABC and ESPN, and
he describes his new role in a typically thoughtful way.
"It's really interesting to play a role in influencing how an audience
feels," he says. "Sometimes you have to be tough on a skater, but it's
also important to be positive and endorse the sport."
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