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Celebration on Ice - Boisbriand, QC - Dec. 16, 2011
written by Tina
The 2011 Celebration on Ice tour was a creative collaboration between
Kurt Browning and Geoffrey Tyler, with Kurt choreographing the show,
and Geoffrey helping to provide creative direction (and his singing
voice). The tour kicked off in Boisbriand, QC, in front of an
extremely enthusiastic full crowd who loudly cheered for every skater
and audibly oohed and ahhed and laughed at every jump, spin, and
humorous moment.
My review of this show will be marred by the fact that I don't speak
French, and the dialogue and introductions were all necessarily in
French. In fact, it's rather ironic because Kurt and Geoffrey both
play roles in the show but neither speak French, so Kurt couldn't
host, and neither could really do much dialogue! My understanding is
that in St. John, they will play a bigger role, speaking-wise. In the
first three stops on the tour, they will have to rely on the other
skaters, especially David Pelletier, who played the host in Kurt's
stead.
The other skaters seemed to more than step up to the task, though. The
show opens with the guys in the cast greeting each other and bantering
while pulling out a little mini-set to center ice, with a fake
fireplace, small TV, Christmas tree, and boxes to sit on. They settle
down to watch TV, but can't seem to get reception, so they use Shawn
Sawyer to improve the reception by extending his super flexible leg up
to help augment the antenna, leaving him standing there for a while
with leg up in the air while they happily watch the "game" (for which
the commentary is provided by Kurt via recorded voiceover). I wonder
how long it'll be before that joke makes no sense to anyone - antennas
on a TV you have to fiddle with??
The girls come out and confront the guys, asking if they're going to
stay watching TV all day. Guys: Yes. Girls: Don't you want to do
something? Guys: What do you mean? Girls: Something else. Guys:
Ohhhh...no. Girls: Come on, let's do something. Guys: Like what?
Girls: Let's go dancing! The guys shake their heads, so the girls shut
off the TV. At which Jeff and Shawn Sawyer mockingly make fun of the
idea (did not know what they were saying) while Kurt, David, and Dylan
Moscovitch start prancing about mockingly, skating around all
"prettily" (and with simultaneous jumps, etc) before dismissively
laughing off the idea and plopping down in front of the TV
again. Finally, the girls each grab a guy, and they waltz around to
"Sleigh Bells Ring", and have a nice little opening number before the
music draws to a close and the guys plop down back in front of the TV
again while the girls strike a closing pose. It's a bit of a cute
different kind of show opener, drawing in the audience via watching
the skaters interact and show their personalities and interplay,
rather than with a big skating opening.
The first skater to hit the ice after the opening was Shawn Sawyer,
skating to "Everything is Cool at Christmas Time." Shawn is such a
dynamic performer, super-charismatic, and clearly loves to perform. He
throws himself into every move with such energy, at times it almost
felt *too* frantic to me, but it was never dull and always
engaging. His love of performing just completely shows in his eyes and
face and body language.
Cynthia Phaneuf was next with "Merry Christmas, Baby." She's such an
elegant skater, in a completely different way than Joannie
Rochette. This was a nice program, though I'm currently rather
distracted watching CSOI on TV, so it's a bit difficult for me to
remember the details, unfortunately.
Kirsten Moore-Towers & Dylan Moscovitch skated the next program to
"Jingle Bells." It's interesting - I don't watch eligible skating,
really, so my only exposure to this pair has been with Celebration on
Ice last year and this year, but I feel like I saw a lot of
development in them in just that one year, between their numbers this
year and the numbers last year. They just seem more polished and their
programs more professional. Though, I think Kirsten was wearing the
same dress as for one of their programs last year.
The first local skater of the evening, Melina Di Lauro, took the ice
next to skate to "All I Want For Christmas Is You". She was quite good
- very polished and reasonably confident in front of a supportive
audience. I did wonder, though, why it seems so many younger skaters
like to use this song. I feel like I've seen a number of local skaters
skate to it. She had a nice skate to it, though.
Jeff Buttle was next (garnering a huge cheer on announcement), skating
to his SOI program from last year, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".
Actually, it was kind of funny b/c he, Shawn, Joannie, Kurt, and Jamie
& David all skated to the same program that aired last night on CBC,
so if anyone in the audience had watched that broadcast, it was like a
live repeat. Jeff *totally* sparkles out there when he's performing. I
don't know if it's because the audience was so amped and he was
feeding off of it or because he's just gotten to be so very
comfortable as a performer, but he was completely into the
choreography and completely reaching out to the crowd with his eyes
and his smile. It's like he knew he had us in the palm of his hand and
was just inviting us to play. And he was landing jumps super-solidly
too, which just added to that overall confident feel of this
number.
Joannie Rochette's Christmas number was "The Perfect Gift" by the
Canadian Tenors, the program she did for Holiday Festival on Ice. This
was a really pretty and lyrical program, heartfelt and emotional. The
Canadian Tenors seem to make for really good skating music, at least
if you want to do a pretty, earnest, skating program. She performed
it beautifully and the crowd ADORED her. She got the biggest cheers on
being announced and during her bows.
Jamie Sale & David Pelletier's first number was their "Let's Go Crazy"
number from CSOI last year. The number is a total crowd pleaser, with
the side by side dancing, and the crazy, aggressive tricks and
lifts. I've reviewed this program before, and I can't say much I
haven't said before - it was fun, energetic, and the crowd loved
it. These two are crazy strong and fearless.
Kurt Browning's "Christmas Time is Here" program was next. The music
was instrumental - a pretty piano piece - and the program itself was
an interesting mix of nice, pure skating, and whimsy. He started off
essentially doing figures, and I was amused when the crowd started
cheering such non-flashy turns and moves enthusiastically. I was
struck by the irony that figures used to be considered so boring that
they did away with them, and now doing figures in a program can seem
super creative and garner cheers from the audience. The program
wasn't unabashed pure skating, though - he had moments of crowd
interaction where he'd do things like "Should I? Eh, why not?" in
gestures, or take a move a little longer or further than necessary to
make it humorous, or shrugged at something he did. There was an
amusing "chasing his tail bit" where he starts off kind of turning
slowly, but then goes faster and faster, trying to grab his own
foot. I liked that it wasn't a full out goofy clown number, and it
wasn't a pure pretty skating number. It was very Kurt, and his jumps
were pretty on.
Evidently, Pete Dack injured his arm this week and couldn't perform,
so Violetta Afanasieva did her hoops program as a solo, with an assist
from Kurt. The music was a medley of cute upbeat Christmas songs,
starting off with the Chipmunks and moving on to "Rock 'n Roll
Christmas" or something with the word "rock" in it. I've seen Violetta
do the hoops programs a few times before, but I swear she's picked up
more tricks. It's amazing what she does with those hoops. She's got
such control with them just spinning around her hands, and the fact
that she can hula while skating is even more impressive. Towards the
beginning of the program, she steps into a hoop lying on the ice, and
manages to use her skate blade to hook it up and start it spinning
around herself without using her hands at all. She appeared to jump up
and through the hoop while holding it a couple times, and the things
she can do with the hoops in her hands are really cool. Kurt's role
was to hand her more hoops, the whole time acting like he couldn't
believe she could handle anymore. Then, she did the thing where she's
hulaing like 8 hoops around different parts of her body, and manages
to hula each one up to her hand and toss it over to Kurt, most of the
time landing the hoop over his head neatly. Then, as she's bowing, he
gestures to the big hoops slinky, making expressions and gestures as
if he doesn't think she can do it because it's too hard, and she does
a strongman pose, showing off her muscles, like "I'm strong" and he's
all "whoa!" And of course she does hula the entire stack. In the end,
Kurt tries to hula a few himself, and falls over in the process,
before he sheepishly grabs them all up, and the two skate off
together. I hope Pete gets better soon, but I have to say, I think
Kurt and Violetta were super cute together and he helped her add more
character to the number.
Celebration on Ice always integrates local skaters and synchro teams,
and the Boisbriand show was no exception. I believe the team was
called "Golden Ice", and they skated to a medley of English songs with
a vaguely Spanish sound. There was some interesting, clever
choreography, but I think that nerves got to the team, because there
were also some falls that disrupted the synchronicity (I watched them
warm up, and they did a better job in warmups). The skaters presented
it for all they were worth, though, and recovered quickly from the
problems.
The first act closed with a group number to "Wooden Soldiers on
Parade", featuring Kurt, Shawn, David, and Dylan as the soldiers, and
Jamie and Kirsten as two girls who tried to get their attention and
disrupt their stiff and solemn marching. The guys were dressed up kind
of like British royal guardsmen with the tall black furry hat and the
red uniforms. As they marched out stiffly, they were completely
oblivious to the girls waving their hands in their faces, so the girls
finally tweaked their noses and otherwise bothered them until they
reacted. The girls got shooed off while the four soldiers continued to
skate and march together. They did a kind of mini pinwheel with the
girls on the ends in death spiral position, and there was some
choreography that literally acted out some of the lyrics - sabres
clashing, soldiers winking, etc. There was a cute bit where the four
guys started going further and further down into split positions,
before pulling themselves up and clutching their legs together in
pain, but then Shawn teetered and "fell" into an actual split, so the
rest of them hurried to help him up, by lifting him, still in the
split position, while Kurt directed them where to go. After being put
down, Shawn's leg kept rising on its own accord and he kept pushing it
down. The cutest part, though, was that Jamie and David's son Jesse
took a role, coming out to join them in pajamas and hockey skates,
with David lifting him over his head before handing him off to Jamie,
and Jesse happily jumping and skating around. At one point while he
was out there, Kurt and Kirsten did a death spiral, and Dylan and
Shawn did a death spiral (Shawn's leg up in the air), while Jamie held
Jesse as she went down into a death spiral with David. At the end, the
soldiers all happily wave Jesse off the ice before marching their own
way off the ice. I think the idea was supposed to be that this was all
the little boy's dream. I gotta say, Kurt's signature was all over
that number - all the character work, the humorous bits, the boys vs
girls thing...
After intermission the local CanSkaters came out and skated to "Santa
Claus is Coming to Town". Most of the skaters were really young, and
therefore not very stable on the ice, but it was quite cute. They
actually tried to do something with the choreography too, breaking the
skaters into different groups that did their own little things on the
ice.
In Violetta's first number, Kurt substituted for the absent Pete. In
her second number, Geoffrey Tyler was the substitute. Without an
intro, though, I'm guessing the crowd was rather puzzled who this tall
skinny guy in a Christmas tree costume was, who skated ok but
obviously wasn't a professional. Still, it was quite cute, if a tad
bit cheesy. Geoffrey was dressed up as a Christmas tree, skating
around happily to "The Happiest Christmas Tree", until Violetta
approached him. He backed away from her going all "no no" before
slumping into a sad tree as she pulled him home to be her Christmas
tree. She kept pinning decorations on him, which made him happy, but
then he kept rejecting the star and throwing it to the ground. Finally
they skated off, with Geoffrey taking an (unintentional but will
probably go into future shows) face plant when he tripped over his
toepick, before getting up to lift Violetta, kicking and protesting,
off the ice. It wasn't much of a skating number, but it was cute and
funny.
The second local skater, Nicola Nadeau, came next. I couldn't
understand Jeff's intro, but I think he said he was the champion of
something? He wore a plaid shirt and skated to a very country-sounding
"Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy." This kid was quite a performer too,
who really played up the country aspect in his performance, and had no
problem engaging and looking out into the crowd as he skated. This was
a really fun number. I was a little sad for him though - in warmups he
was landing his jumps really solidly, one after another, in the midst
of all those champion skaters, but in the actual show, he missed a
couple jumps. I wonder if it was the show lighting. He rallied really
well though, and never let up on the performance. He was really fun to
watch!
Kirsten and Dylan's second number was to "Dreaming with a Broken
Heart" by John Mayer, and I really liked it. This is really the
number where I was like, wow, I feel like they've matured a lot since
last year. They took their time where they needed it, and really just
played out the poignancy and heartbreak and emotion of the number in
how they related to each other on the ice. It was just really smooth
and pretty.
Shawns's second number was his "Working for the Weekend" number from
last year's CSOI. This is just such a cute, personality-filled
number. It was a great deal of fun, and the audience loved it,
especially when he was unbuttoning his jacket with his back to the
audience, and really playing it up. The whole businessman shedding his
suit and revealing a tattooed wildman underneath theme was cute,
though I did think it funny since Shawn's job is nothing like
that.
Cynthia skated to something by a French female singer with an acoustic
guitar that I didn't recognize. It was slow and ballady, and she did a
lovely job skating a subtly emotional and yearning program to
it.
Jeff brought his "Ave Maria" program (sung by the Canadian Tenors) to
the show, and it was simply gorgeous. Jeff is such a beautiful skater
- I love his lines when he does more classical type programs like
this, and he's really good at understated emotions in his performance
as well. He wore his costume from his Enigma program last year, which
was appropriate, since it had a similar feel. Just a gorgeous
program.
Having reviewed like five shows in the last year with Joannie skating
"Show Me How You Burlesque", I really don't have anything left to say
about it, unfortunately! She does a fantastic job with this number
and the audience really enjoys her. Jeff was the recipient of the cane
tossing in this iteration of the program, dancing out of the curtains
in his Ave Maria costume to catch it.
Jamie & David's second number was to "The Prayer" by the Canadian
Tenors, and it was simply beautiful. These two do the energetic
high-flying aggressive numbers amazingly well, but I love it when they
go soft. Especially when they make ample use of David's spread eagles,
which I think are just gorgeous. I love it when they do moves in
counterpoint where he's doing a spread eagle around her while she
spins, or does a spread eagle next to her while she does some other
edgy move. And I think "The Prayer" is a great skating song (even if
Roca & Sur already did it, and I think they did it for the HFOI finale
the other year the Canadian Tenors were the guest). Loved this.
I've also seen and reviewed "Steppin' Out of My Mind" rather a lot in
the last year. I love when Geoffrey and Kurt get to perform together,
and I think it's an utterly brilliant program. I do continue to think
that they need to highlight Geoffrey more - I *knew* he was there and
even I forgot for the first part of the program that there was a live
singer there, and then I had to look for him before I found him. It's
a testament to how good he sounds that no one even realizes he's live,
but what's the point of a live singer if you don't know he's there?
They had Violetta come out to give Kurt his coast and throw him his
cane, too, so Geoffrey didn't even get that role. This was an
excellent performance, not least because Kurt's jumps were working for
him. His voiceover is recorded so you could interpret his reaction to
his jumps as either actually commenting on a successful landing or a
sarcastic reaction to a flubbed landing, but the sarcasm wasn't needed
this time around. His footwork was awesome as usual, and the whole
premise is so clever, but I did wonder if the French-speaking crowd
understood the voiceover.
Kurt escorted Violetta off the ice, while Geoff remained on the ice so
David could come out to introduce him to the crowd and ask him a bunch
of questions in French (to which he always responded "Ouai"). I'm told
they used the fact that Geoff doesn't speak French as part of the
joke, with David asking stuff like "so you don't understand anything
I'm saying" and "So you like poutine" with Geoff just agreeing to
anyting he said. This transitioned into the finale where I *think* the
premise was that the skaters requested their favorite Christmas songs,
and Geoff sang them while they skated.
The finale was thus a Christmas medley, broken up by dialogue, with
Geoffrey singing the whole thing while standing on the ice. It
started with "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas", with Shawn
and Violetta coming out to skate together. The main highlight of this
bit was both of them showing off their extreme flexibility with
Violetta doing a backwards spiral with her leg super high, and Shawn a
forward one with *his* leg super high as well. This was followed by
"Deck the Halls" with the two pairs going out to do side by side lifts
and spins, as well as a tandem death spiral. They also did a bit where
they traded off partners before switching back to their own
partners.
Then came "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", with Violetta escorting
Geoffrey to the middle of the ice while Joannie and Cynthia went out
to the end of the ice and did simultaneous jumps. Violetta then broke
off to do a Biellmann spin, before the three of them started doing
choreography together, including a tricky, not quite perfect sequence
of footwork side by side down the length of the ice and back
again. Then it was the guys' turn with a fun skate to "Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer" - Kurt, Jeff, and Shawn with side by side
footwork, jumps, funny bits...all three are consummate performers so
they work well together. The fact that it was the first show kind of
showed, IMO, but they should get a bit more polish on it over the next
few shows. The ending bit was cute, with the three putting their arms
around each others' shoulders for an ending pose, then suddenly
breaking away and dancing all crazy, before going back to the pose
again. Finally I think David asked Geoffrey to close things off with
one final song, and he agreed. The lights come down a bit, and he
started by inviting "Mssr Browning" out and singing "Silent Night".
Kurt had a pretty little solo off the top of that, with some bits
reminiscent of Downstream from last year, before the other skaters all
joined him on the ice for a group finale.
Overall, the show definitely needs some more practice in the group
numbers to get more polish and unison in the moves, and it would have
helped a great deal to speak French to judge how well the finale
flowed as a premise, but I'd say it was an overall success. I love
that Kurt & Geoff really put thought into trying to make the show more
theatrical and with more personality, even with the limited time they
had to work with the cast. I'm very much looking forward to seeing
their next collaboration with Stars on Ice!
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