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Kurt Browning, the star of Stars for so long, brings his greatest hits to Toronto on his farewell tour

Browning found his happy place as a performer and fans never fell out of love with him

Source: Toronto Star
Date: April 27, 2023
Author: Rosie DiManno
Kurt Browning can't positively remember the last time he turned a quad jump. Probably in 2008. But everyone remembers the first time he landed it cleanly in competition - a quad toe at the 1988 world figure skating championships - because it was the first time anyone did.

The triple Axel that was arguably Browning's most sublime jump, well, that one disappeared quite a while back also. "I tried it a few times maybe six or seven years ago. It hurt."

These days, Browning's only remaining performance three-rotation jump is the homely triple toe. "Every once in a while I try a Sal or, on a dare, a loop." He laughs. "My old warm-up jumps."

The four-time world champion from an era of Canadian supremacy in men's skating - Brian Orser to Browning to Elvis Stojko to Patrick Chan - has been shedding bits of his skating repertoire for decades, after imbuing the sport with profound technical skill and creative artistry, often with a dollop of humour. Yet his sheer entertainment éclat has never withered. He is the consummate showman. By his own estimation, a better pro performer than an amateur competitor, for all the accolades and triumphs accrued in his career.

But now, with his 57th birthday looming, that part of his life - a signature 30-year headlining affiliation with Stars on Ice - is about to end, too. When the Stars tour comes through Toronto, May 5 at Scotiabank Arena, it will be Browning's swan song to the city where he has long resided.

"Considering all the golds, I don't look at my career as an amateur and think, great skate after great skate. I just wasn't that kind of competitor. I was a much better show skater. As successful as my amateur career was, I think I was a much better performer. I'm looking at my potential back then versus what I did. The bulk of my work as an amateur, it just had too many mistakes for me to be an iconic amateur competitor. Like, I wouldn't choose me if I was on a panel."

An amateur career which, to his eternal regret, never included Olympic gold. "Anybody who gets that close to the top podium at the Olympics and they say it didn't matter? Ah, come on." In three Olympics, twice favoured for title chops, Browning finished eighth, sixth, then fifth at Lillehammer in 1994. What many never knew is that he had told family and Skate Canada he intended to retire before those Games, satisfied he was leaving Canadian figure skating in good hands with the emergence of Stojko. And he was itching to turn pro. Ultimately, he hung in for Lillehammer.

For Albertville, Browning was suffering with a bad back, improperly trained to navigate injury. "My dad said, ‘You're going into a gunfight with a knife.' I wasn't prepared. And then Lillehammer, I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I didn't go in there with a killer instinct.''

Show performance, that’s where Browning found his true happy place, which explains his longevity in that genre. Fans never fell out of love with him and in return, down through these many years, he’s given them two solo turns and participated in every ensemble number in every Stars tour.

Why has he endured in audience appreciation while others, with at least equal luminosity, have faded from view? What does he bring that allows him to stack up so well against recent hotshots who toss off much bigger jumping tricks, quads six ways from Sunday?

"The same things I would like to think I saw in Scott Hamilton when I was the young hotshot, which I couldn’t touch," says Browning, referring to the American crackerjack around whom Stars was basically built. "And that was a relationship with the audience. The trust that ticket-buyers had in Scott. I looked at that, even as a young man, and I thought, 'I want that some day.' And I worked really hard to try to create that kind of trust with the skating fans of Stars and skating fans in general.

"There is a relationship that exists over time I feel is really strong."

Besides, if we're talking jumping prowess eroded, most fans can't distinguish between a triple toe and a triple Axel, much less the torque blur between a triple and a quad. "They're more impressed with the speed going in, the speed coming out. They like to feel that the jump came out of nowhere. That long buildup is also exciting. But I haven't done it for this long without recreating the wheel - looking in the mirror and going what this time?"

What exemplified the Kurt oeuvre was memorably choreographed programs delivered with chutzpah: Singing in the Rain, where he skated with an umbrella; Casablanca, with a pause for an imagine puff on a cigarette, Humphrey Bogart-style; and Bonzo's Montreux, to Led Zeppelin. Those latter two are his own favourites. All the costumes are still stored at his midtown home, which he shares with wife Alissa Czisny, the two-time U.S. national champion he married last summer.

Czisny has choreographed one of Browning's two new solo programs for the Stars tour, to "Please Forgive Me," by British singer-songwriter David Gray. "It's got nothing to do with my last year of Stars," Browning says. "It's got no message. We literally just really loved this song. And I like the pacing of it. This song has space for me to just take my time. It's about the long hug."

With the audience.

The other program, which Browning choreographed, is a pastiche of evocative bits culled from his most beloved routines, performed fittingly enough to The Who's "Who Are You?" He scoured YouTube to check out the old Kurt. "I got this idea to steal little tidbits, a step here, a glide there, 10 whole seconds from Brick House, shtick from The Clown. The costumes and memories that go with those skates was trying to fit a bit of a square peg into a round hole.

"It's like a photo album of choreographed moves." That should certainly resonate with audiences.

Featured as well is a duet with three-time world champion Stojko, with both skaters mic'd, talking to each other and the crowd.

"Like two old guys having fun," Browning says. "We wanted to acknowledge our friendship over the years but also what we brought to the sport. It's a goodbye. I wanted to add this as a gift to our fans - one more time."

Browning's career has spanned several reinventions, from competitive skater to choreographer to TV commentator. He has no interest in coaching but intends to continue in one-off shows, charitable events, and inspiring young skaters as a guest mentor.

He didn't want his career to end with the COVID pause that darkened all sports and the Stars tour for a while. A career that began at a newly covered rink in the foothills of Alberta, half a century ago, when his mom put him in a figure skating club essentially to boost his skating skills as a kidlet hockey player.

"I just never quit it."