June 24, 2015

Ice Cold Combos in Concert

They are so close to their fundraising goal ... can you help out?

The concert is June 26- 28 at the Ice Chalet in Knoxville, TN.  Tickets are available from www.productionsonice.com.

There's lots of chatter from the cast on Facebook and Twitter, so head to #iceconcert or #icecoldcombos if you want to get a sneak peek at rehearsals.

Toi toi guys!

June 22, 2015

Ranking the 100 Best Men in Figure Skating

No, I'm not prepared to name them ... but 20 Minutos is and it's a fun list to read, you can scroll the whole thing (no pesky "NEXT" buttons to keep hitting) and it does seem pretty complete.  But brace yourself kiddos, it's in Spanish.  I came across it from a tweet by Binky's Johnny Weir Blog.  And you can put in your own vote, so it's not over yet.


Can you guess who Binky's favorite skater is?


Anyone you can think of that didn't make the cut?  Personally, I would like to see Scott Williams up there, but this list skews toward competition, not shows.  This list also skews to younger skaters whose fans are all over the internet.  Where's Gary Beacom's internet fan base?  Anyone else?

Up Next - the women's list ...


June 15, 2015

As every showgirl knows ...

the art of the quick change.  It's demonstrated quite well in this clip filmed during the 2015 Tony Awards.


She's calm, methodical, and not naked for the camera, but did you notice something else?  How many dressers does she have?  Four - one, two, three, four.

That's a lot of dressers for one performer.  In Holiday On Ice, we were lucky enough to have dressers.  The show hired local dressers in each city we played.  It was a great way for us to ask where there were good restaurants open late at night or laundromats open all night.  But as with hats, wigs, and elaborate costumes, the Holiday On Ice budget for dressers got slashed.  Back in the 80s, the count was something like four or five dressers to 28 chorus girls.  But that's changed now.  First off, there aren't usually 28 chorus girls, even in Disney On Ice.

Today, Disney has roughly eighteen in the chorus, guys and girls, but they still have to have dressers.  Some of those costumes (think Sully from Monsters Inc.) have to have someone helping you get in there.

I was impressed that a few of the Tony winners thanked their dressers as well as family and directors and producers.  Not bad.

June 8, 2015

The 30 Best Figure Skating Outfits of All Time

Thanks to my mother-in-law, I got this email this morning: courtesy of Elle magazine, as the title claims, "The 30 Best Figure Skating Outfits of All Time"  ... so tell me, what do you think?

click on the link and I'll wait for you to wade through the 30 photos ... you're welcome!

One thing for sure, they managed to find some pretty unflattering poses and facial expressions to go with some of those beautiful dresses.  Another thing, if you're going back to 1924, you're going to have thousands and thousands of dresses to take into consideration.

I do like Peggy Fleming's green dress with the rhinestone-studded collar and Nancy Kerrigan's iconic Vera Wang dress should be included for sure, but where's Dorothy Hamill's famous pink dress from her 1976 win?  (Note: I'd insert that photo here, but it isn't available under "labeled for noncommercial reuse" and Ice Charades is a little weary of slapping up photos that she doesn't have the say-so for ...)

And for that matter no Ashley Wagner or the queen herself Yuna Kim?  I haven't even gotten into pair or ice dance skaters because they have worn so many beautiful dresses, my head would explode trying to list them.

Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful to see skaters from the 20's, 30's and 40's and see what the fashion of the day was ... but to compare them to modern-day equivalent of the richest Quinceanera dresses on ice ...



Come to think of more recent competitions, Gracie Gold also had a lovely blue dress and a striking red dress.  You know which ones I'm talking about ... here's the blue dress (with my friend, choreographer Scott Brown at her side, btw)


I guess you can't see much of the dress because of all the stuffed animals in the way, but heh, the photo is "labeled for noncommercial reuse" okay.


By the way, I downloaded these noncommercial reuse dresses of various wonderful skaters and I think some of these could edge out a few questionable dresses from Elle's list.

What do you think of these?





I've got more ...





Come on, let's see what you think?  Got a favorite dress to add to the list?

June 2, 2015

another turn that reminds me of skating ...

When you rediscover ballet, as I have done recently, you get a lot of the Balletoman in your Facebook newsfeed and you get clips like this ...



A "Very Cool Pirouette" looks a lot like a back scratch spin to me, right up until the ending.  When did these dancers get so many revolutions on their turns?

Okay, back to whatever you were doing.  :-)