Time to Skate On

Copyright Newsday, Inc. Produced by Newsday Electronic Publishing.

WHEN Scott Hamilton first arranged a five-city touring skating show 15 years ago, the determined, personable Olympic gold medalist could not have known Stars on Ice would grow into an enormously successful annual venture reaching 65 cities. This year the show he nurtured, co-produced and headlined as leading performer is saying thanks and farewell to Hamilton as he skates his final season before moving on to expand his horizons.

"I've been touring since 1980. It's really tough to do year after year and stay fresh. Now I want to change the rules, come up with something different," Hamilton said during a brief mid-December visit to New York. He returns to the metropolitan area this weekend with Target Stars on Ice skating at Nassau Coliseum Friday night and Madison Square Garden Saturday night.

Hamilton leads an emotional, music-driven show that includes fellow Olympic gold medalists Kristi Yamaguchi, Ilia Kulik and Tara Lipinski, as well as such other figure skating luminaries as Ekaterina Gordeeva, Kurt Browning and Yuka Sato.

At 42, the feisty Hamilton is certainly not stinting in his performing energy: He skates three demanding solos and provides the heartfelt center of the program, which incorporates reflective, retrospective elements amid a buoyant, upbeat tone. "The thread this year is my life experiences," Hamilton said, "and the development and growth of Stars on Ice."

The music for the mix of inventive solos, duets and ensemble numbers ranges from Marvin Gaye to Sting, from Joni Mitchell to Isaac Hayes' theme from "Shaft." Soul music figures prominently this year, with Hamilton setting the tone early in the program with a high-flying solo to James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)."

Back in December, as he finished his lunch at Essex House before heading to Washington for an event at the White House, Hamilton was feeling good as he contemplated the future. Nearly four years removed from his frightening encounter with testicular cancer, he is considering many options once the heavy time demands of Stars on Ice are behind him.

"After this year I want to close this chapter and open something new. There are some things I'd like to experience, and some things I can only do while I have the legs to do them. It's just time to do them now," said Hamilton. High on the list is a possible theatrical venture, although he's still mulling over what form it might take. "Everything's been discussed, from taking a book musical and putting it on ice, to doing a one-man show -- and everything in between.

"The one-man-show idea really fascinates me. That would be the ultimate. It could be anything. The possibility is really exciting to me, because of the enormity and the challenge of it. That would really be making a major statement. But I have to be sensible as well.

"I was also thinking about putting a company together and doing a phenomenal show of movement to music. To do something on ice with a company of killer skaters -- most of whom wouldn't be well-known at all, but just so talented -- is also very appealing."

So should we expect to see his name in lights on the Great White Way sometime soon? "Broadway would be the ultimate goal," he said. "When you start skating, you aim for the Olympics, and when you go into theater, you hope to end up someday in New York. So I would say I want to develop something that would be worthy of Broadway."

Hamilton, who was world champion for four years and won Olympic gold in 1984, founded Stars on Ice to create his own post-Olympic performance arena when Ice Capades let him go. "They said only female skaters sell tickets," he said.

The 12 Stars on Ice skaters are on the road from late December through early April. They function very much like a dance company, convening in September for an intensive three-week rehearsal period. Each year the Stars on Ice program is conceived by a creative team headed by director Sandra Bezic, and its ambitions extend well beyond simply being a showcase for stellar skaters in their specialty numbers.

While each of them certainly has a moment in the spotlight, the show features sophisticated ensemble numbers for the full company as well as novel combinations. This year's program, for example, includes a duet for Lipinski and Kulik, and Hamilton skates with Denis Petrov to "Shaft." "Chairs," an unusual number choreographed by Christopher Dean (best known as part of the stellar Torvill and Dean ice-dance duo), propels Renee Roca, four men and five chairs around the ice to a techno beat. An extended section called "Tunnel Vision" is, according to Hamilton, "a comedic look backstage. It's all about what everybody's goofy tendencies are, and I kind of host it.

"The rehearsal period this year was the happiest one we've ever had," he said. The dynamic dozen have become a tight ensemble; Sato is the one newcomer this year, but many of the skaters have been part of the tour for many seasons. The choreographers -- who also include Michael Siebert and Lea Ann Miller -- and design team also are stalwarts.

It's a measure of the high regard in which Stars on Ice is held that after winning Olympic gold in 1998, Lipinski and Kulik made joining the show their first move. "Everyone gets to really develop as a performer, to learn something new or experience something on the ice they've never experienced before," Hamilton said. "There's a sense of teamwork that exists in a company like this that's hard to find anywhere else."

He admitted to slightly paternal feelings about Stars on Ice. "It's my child, but it's reached its adolescence now, and it needs to be independent. In order for the tour to get to the next level, the next generation, it needs to be passed on. There needs to be a sense of ownership and responsibility that they can't feel as long as I'm in the company and they look to me as being the founder, the dad. I think it will be wonderful and invigorating for them."

Although he'll maintain an involvement with Stars on Ice, he'll become more active as a television skating commentator, a position he's filled often in the past but has put on the back burner in recent years. He'll plunge back in just in time for the buildup toward the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. "I have to become more familiar with the current crop of skaters in order to tell their stories the way they'd want it to be told. I'll be working for NBC for the first time, and I'll probably do some events before the Olympics, to get to know their strengths and weaknesses."

Hamilton skates his final five-minute solo on his final Stars on Ice program ("the hardest number I've ever done for the tour") to "My Way," but with a twist. This special arrangement of the song allows him to blend heartfelt emotion with the goofy charm and ebullient playfulness that have endeared him to skating audiences for two decades -- and to showcase fast, sharp footwork that should be the envy of skaters half his age.