Kurt Browning Making Life Changes

Kurt Browning has experienced some major changes in his life recently - he became a father, he is not a regular cast member with the U.S. portion of the Stars On Ice tour, he's become involved in choreographing for other skaters and he is doing some broadast work as a host on the Canadian Biography Channel.

But there is a constant, something that hasn't changed.

"I still feel like a skater," he said as he prepared to compete in the 10th edition of Ice Wars in mid-November. "You know, there are a lot of things out there I think I might like to do, and things that I may do in the future.

"But right now, I still feel like a skater, so that's what I'm doing."

The effervescent Browning certainly performs like a top-flight skater - with his quick feet and outgoing personality, he is still one of the most popular performers on the pro circuit some 22 years after he finished 12th in his first Canadian novice competition and 10 years after his final "amateur" appearance at the 1994 Olympic Games.

However, fans have had to look a bit harder to find a place to see the 37-year-old Browning this season after his withdrawal from the U.S. portion of the Stars on Ice.

Browning will be performing on approximately 20 of the U.S. stops of the tour as one of several "revolving" guest stars, and plans to do all 12 stops of the Canadian tour. That's quite a difference from the 60-plus U.S. tour stops and 8-12 Canadian cities he's done every year since 1996, with the exception of 1999, when he bypassed the U.S. tour for personal reasons.

Contrary to some speculation, he said his withdrawal from the U.S. Stars on Ice tour this season was not prompted by that fact that he became a father when his wife, Sonia Rodriguez, gave birth to their first child, Gabriel Browning Rodriguez, on July 12, 2003.

"That was just a happy coincidence," he said of becoming a dad at the same time that his time on the road was being cut back drastically. "We were ready for a baby, we felt it was the right time, but the fact that I'm not touring on Stars the year Gabriel was born is just a coincidence."

Gabriel's arrival just happened to coincide with a long-planned end to his intensive participatoin with Stars. "When I joined the tour full time, I said that I thought eight years on Stars on Ice - like, two four-year terms - would be great, that's what I hoped I could do.

"Well, last year's tour (2002-03) was my eighth year, and I still felt the same way - that was enough. You know, Kristi (Yamaguchi) said she wanted to do 10 years, and she did 10 years and then stopped. And I said eight years, and after eight years, I was ready to stop."

The Canadian tour, however, is not part of that "eight-years-is-enough" plan.

"Well," he said with a grin, "in theory, I've always felt that I'll do the Canadian tour as long as I'm still skating and the tour is still going. I'm not sure if they (officials) have the same theory, but that's my theory, and I hope to be doing that show for a few more years yet."

The guest-star slot was another happy coincidence, one he hadn't expected back in 1995 when he made his "eight-year" goal, but one he wasn't surprised to be asked to do after last season's tour.

"Last year, they had Scott (Hamilton, the tour's founder) and Katia (Gordeeva) do some guest spots, and they kind of hinted they might do it again this season," he said. "The call (to invite him to guest star), when it came, wasn't a big surprise, but it was welcome.

"Being a guest star is nice. Stars On Ice has been a part of my life for so long, this allows me to taper off of it a little bit, instead of ripping away from it all at once. I'll be doing a couple of solos and then I think that there is a spot reserved in the opening and closing for the guest stars, so I'll get to fit in there, too."

Browning said being part of the Stars On Ice "family" has been a highlight of his career, but leaving the tour now isn't as hard as it would have been a few years ago. With the gradual phasing out of "amateur" skating since 1988, skaters now are accustomed to making money from performances and competition. Most of the top names, and many of the less-well-known skaters, tour and perform in front of big audiences and on TV for many years. They can, and do, compete on the world and Olympic scene for a much longer time now than most of the skaters of Browning's era were able to do, and they are able to combine touring, TV work and competing in many different ways.

That whole situation, he said, has changed the feeling of what was traditionally considered "professional" skating.

"It's not as, I don't know how to term it, maybe that it's not as innocent as it used to be," he said. "When Kristi and Paul (Wylie) and I started (on Stars On Ice), we were just so excited to be there. When we were coming up, we didn't know these kind of opportunities would be there for us, so we were really grateful just to have them.

"Now, the skaters not only know there are opportunities, they expect them. It's like, when someone gives you a birthday gift, it's nice, but you expect it. When someone gives you a gift out of nowhere, it's something special. So the feeling is just different now."

Another big difference in his life is, of course, being a father. But that is a very welcome difference.

"It feels comfortable," he said of his role as dad. "It all just feels right. I 've never been around children that much - I was the youngest in my family by a lot, and I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with younger nieces and nephews, so I haven't been around kids a lot.

"But still, this all feels right and comfortable - maybe," he added with a grin, "because I'm so much of a kid myself. Sonia and I are lucky - we were so ready, and we've been able to earn enough that we can provide a lot of things that take away some of the pressure that other parents face when a new baby comes into the family. We can afford to slow down a little. We have been able to really enjoy being parents, it's been great."

Browning said he and Sonia split duties, with both getting plenty of chances to change diapers and get up with a fussy little one. Being that both are top-level performers - Sonia is a principal dancer for the National Ballet of Canada - they understand each other's needs.

"Like last week, as I was preparing for this competition. Sonia was doing almost all of the getting up at night with Gabriel," he said. "She was also performing this week, but it was a role she felt comfortable with and felt prepared for, so she said I needed to get my rest and be able to prepare for this.

"Then after I get back from this, it'll be my turn to kind of be the one up every night for a while."

Who does Gabriel look like? Browning laughed said they didn't figure he looked like anyone in either family in particular. "Except," Browning added with a laugh, "since he had his head shaved a week or so ago - that's a cultural thing with Sonia's family - I guess I'd have to say he looks a lot like me!"

He and Sonia try to get to each other's performances when possible, but it doesn't always happen that way.

"It seems like I'm always there for her performances or never there," he said. "It goes in patterns, that I'll be there a lot and then not be there at all. But it works out pretty well."

Browning said he would be happy to be around home more, but that isn't happening this season, even without a full Stars on Ice schedule.

"I'm still really busy," he said. "This fall, I thought I'd have just one or two things, but there's been my show (Gotta Skate), and two or three others, then this competition and another one (World Team Challenge), so I've been away a lot.

"Then there's a week and a half with Stars in January, then the (Celebration on Ice) tour in Canada in February, then more Stars in March and Canadian Stars in April - I thought I wouldn't be away that much, wouldn't be that busy, but this looks like a pretty full season."

In addition to performing and competition - Browning said he's still comfortable competing "as long as I have good material" - he is also experimenting in other areas. He has worked with Lea Ann Miller in creating his three Gotta Skate shows.

"Lea Ann and I are, I think, becoming a pretty good team," he said. "I think we're starting to figure this out, so we're not making the same mistakes over and over."

In his three Gotta Skate shows, he's helped on some of the choreography and, especially this year, been involved in coming up with concepts and ideas. This year's show, which was set up to be party night at the local nightclub, came about after a lot of consultation and planning.

"When Lea Ann and I put this show together, it was a long, drawn-out, see-you-next-week-we'll-do-it-again conversation," he said. "It's kind of one person says one thing and it leads to other things."

But Browning could identify his own thoughts and purposes coming into those discussions. "The first Gotta Skate was really targeted towards that center core of skating fans in a way. The next one was a party, an eclectic mixture of singing, dance, gymnastics and skating, which was as lot of fun," he said.

"But I wanted to take a step back to the first year and hit that target audience again with this one. And once we signed (Canadian crooner sensation Michael) Buble, then it was like, well, I really like this kind of music and if he's going to be our only guest, we could build an idea around him. And also, I'd seen Brian Boitano's Hernando's Hideaway and I wanted to use that, for him to be that character, so we took those two ideas and away we went."

The idea of a once-concept show - and the chance to work with Boitano - fulfilled two wishes Browning has had for many years.

"I've never really worked with Brian," Browning said. "For one reason or another, it's never worked out. I mean, we've done shows together, but I've never had a Stars On Ice experience with him, some event where we actually skate together. I've done jumps and choreography together with Brian Orser, Scott Hamilton, Paul Wyile, so many others, but Brian (Boitano) and I never had. So I said I wanted Brian as a guest in the show, and I wanted not only that, but I wanted to skate beside him while we have knees that still bend. And besides, he hadn't been in Canada for, what, six or seven years, so it really made sense to a lot of people - well, to me and Lea Ann! - to bring him in."

Boitano said the opportunity to be in Browning's show dovetailed perfectly with his own ideas and plans.

"I've always wanted to work with Kurt," Boitano said. "I've invited him for my show, but it's never worked out. So I decided if I was ever going to do it, it'd have to be in his. The only condition was that I get to skate with him."

And both seemed to enjoy the opportunity to its fullest.

"We had a great time," said Browning of the duet, which opened with Browning doing a piece of one of his old favorites, Hey Pachuco, followed by a "showdown" between he and Boitano, with Topsy as the music. "Brian came in a day early, so we could work on it, and he came in very prepared, and we were just laughing all the time."

"I had a great time," Boitano said. "It was a lot of fun. We'd love to do it again somewhere, we just don't know where."

And, while Browning said he figured he was "biting off more than we can chew" to try to get a one-theme show put together in a couple of days, he went ahead with it because it was important to him.

"I've always wanted to do a show with one theme, but Stars On Ice has never been able to do that, so I thought that maybe Lea Ann and I could do it with this show," he said. "We wouldn't have a story, but everyone could be characters, with Brian as Hernando, and me as Party Guy - and then everyone started getting names and we just started having fun, like Todd Eldredge was Big Daddy. It just grew from there."

He got into the "Party Guy" image by dying his hair an electric yellow. "I wanted it to be a shock. It wasn't made to look like I'm blond, it was made to look like I dyed my hair platinum yellow. I wasn't trying to look blond, I was trying to look like Dennis Rodman. When they asked me what color blond, I said 'I want it to look fake, I want it to look like he's a wild guy, a party guy.' And they did," he said.

Getting "really" into what he's involved with is a characteristic of Browning's - and he said there are more ideas on the horizon that he's interested in exploring.

Like his work as a studio host for the Biographhy Channel in Canada.

"Working with the Biography Channel has brought a new dimension to my career," he said. "I enjoy offering perspectives as an athlete and a celebrity to the biographies that I introduce."

There's also choreography. He's helped various skaters with footwork over the years, but lately he's taken to choreographing entire programs. Browning said he's been working with several eligible skaters, "probably the only one you'd recognize is (Japan's) Takeshi Honda. In fact, when I get back from here, I've got to start looking for music for an exhibition program for him."

Finding music and actually constructing an entire program for someone is fun, but challenging. "It's exciting - it's something I think I might like to do more of," he said. "I guess you just have to start working with skaters, start somewhere, and see where it leads. You know, people tend to think that some of those who do choreography have always just been choreographers. Like Lea Ann - the kids today think of her as just a choreographer, they think that's all she's ever done.

"But I skated with her, I know her as a skater, and then a choreographer. And she started just doing some things for other people. So, you start somewhere, and that's where I am right now."

Getting more involved in choreography would be interesting, he said. So would doing more production work, or any number of other things.

But there's something else that still comes first. "You know, when you become a father and quit touring all in the same year, everyone seems to think you'll have a profound answer for what you want to do next in your life," he said. "I don't. I'm to the point where I'm comfortable with who I am as a performer. And maybe someday people will think of me as Kurt Browning, the choreographer. That would be good. Or maybe I'll be involved in other things. That would be fine. I know I'm excited about whatever is going to happen next, because it'll be a change.