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The Temptations provide music for show, but won't be donning skates

Source: Globe and Mail
Date: October 11, 2007
Author: Beverley Smith
When legendary Motown group The Temptations strode into the Hershey Centre for their date with figure skating, one thing became very clear to them about this novel task.

"It's cold!" one of the members of the quintet said.

The Temptations were in Mississauga to provide live music - along with a younger group heavily influenced by them, Boyz II Men - for Kurt Browning's seventh edition of Gotta Skate last night at the frigid rink.

The Temptations had never met the 41-year-old former world champion and skating icon before they encountered Browning in a hallway on Tuesday.

However, the group had provided live music once before for a skating show in West Virginia about five or six years ago.

The singers couldn't recall the headline skater, but did remember vividly one of the show's participants: Surya Bonaly, an athletic black skater from France who always sizzled. "I was like, 'Wow,' " one of the Tempts said.

"We are always interested in doing different things," said Otis Williams, the only original member of the band that became The Temptations in Detroit in 1961.

"And it gives us great television exposure."

Gotta Skate will air on Nov. 11 on NBC and at a date to be announced on CBC.

"I think when you're in the business as long as they have been, it's pretty hard to find something they haven't touched," Browning said.

Williams watches figure skating on television during Olympics. "It's a graceful sport," he said.

Williams says with a grin that he is 26 years old.

In reality, he will turn 66 on Oct. 30, but he hasn't lost a step - still precise and energetic doing the group's recognizable dance steps on stage.

Other members of the current incarnation of The Temptations, whose lineup has changed several times over the past 40 years, include Ron Tyson, a tenor/falsetto who joined the group in 1983; secondary lead Terry Weeks, who has been a Tempt since 1998; bass Joe Herndon, a four-year veteran of the crew; and powerful vocalist Bruce Williamson, who joined the group this year.

Although The Temptations are one of the most successful groups in music history, not everybody in the skating world is familiar with them.

Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen was born in 1984. Does she know much about The Temptations?

"Not really," she said. "But I do love old music. I'm a big fan of the Beatles and Ray Charles."

"Who?" responded several skaters in the crew when told they were going to skate to music from The Temptations.

Even Browning, who's from a much earlier generation of skaters, says he had gone through life hearing the group's music and not always realizing the source.

"They were really good, weren't they?" he said. "Yes they were."

As an aid, Browning and choreographer Lea Ann Miller came armed to early rehearsals for Gotta Skate with DVDs of The Temptations' concerts. And the skaters learned even more after The Temptations took to the stage for a rehearsal on Tuesday night.

The skaters applauded the musical group after they performed their first number and clustered about the stage as the group took them through their on-stage choreography for their hit Get Ready, giving the skaters exact counts and sequence of moves.

Browning says he's hoping the show comes off as a nice marriage between what the musicians and the skaters offer.

For his part in this unusual marriage of talents, Williams was asked if he would like to don a pair of skates.

"Not even," the singer said emphatically.

"I'd be on my backside more than I would be upright."