Kurt Browning's Gotta Skate! show comes to Copps

It's not a mid-life crisis by any means, but Kurt Browning does find himself at a career crossroads.

"I'm trying to decide what I want to do," says the 36-year-old four-time world figure skating champion. "Do I want to continue Stars on Ice for a few more years? I'm in great shape, but do I want to work with a coach and get all the triples down again? For me to be the skater that I want to be, I have to go hard and practise more.

"Do I want to get into choreography? Am I really ready to let go of the skating, or do I get my ass in gear and continue what I'm doing and take it to a higher level?

"I need to make a decision about it."

Browning has been a leading professional figure skater since 1994, and the top touring pro on the planet since his friend and mentor Scott Hamilton retired from Stars on Ice two seasons ago. He headlines both the U.S. and Canadian tours and has assumed the mantle worn for so many years by Hamilton: the overseer and philsophical guardian of what's best about pro skating.

Browning and his wife Sonia Rodriguez, a principal dancer with the National Ballet, would like to spend more time with each other, perhaps start a family, and lessen the impact that two top-notch professional performing careers can have on a relationship.

They came up with the perfect vehicle in Gotta Skate!, a hybrid skating/dancing/music show which will be performed at Copps Coliseum Friday night, and taped for later prime time showings on The W Network and NBC.

It's the second year for Gotta Skate!, which was taped in Vancouver last year and drew very strong numbers on NBC. The concept was suggested to Browning by skating promoter Steve Disson and is meant to be a skating adaptation of Gotta Dance!

"Steve, we should have a dance theme because of my wife," Browning explained. "And everyone has always said I'm more like a dancer. This year, it's more upbeat, a little younger, because of the kind of acts we have. I try to use people I know and like."

Skating fans will be ultra-familiar with the bladed personnel: Hamilton returns to Copps Coliseum for the first time since his farewell tour; Brian Orser was world champion and twice Olympic silver medallist; Briton Steve Cousins is one of the most popular entertainers ever to skate at Copps; Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze are co-Olympic pairs champions who were stranded with Jamie Sal?and David Pelletier in the glare of the Salt Lake City pairs skating scandal; Lu Chen was the 1995 world champion and one of the most lyrical skaters ever; Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler were 1993 world pairs champions and are gifted professional performers; and Jos? Chouinard won three Canadian championships, as well as a couple of Canadian pro championships on Copps ice.

Non-skating performers include Edwin and The Pressure, featuring the former lead singer of I Mother Earth; R and B star Deborah Cox; the impressionist/acrobatic troupe AntiGravity who helped close the 2002 Winter Games with Browning; and Rodriguez and her frequent National partner Alex Antonijevic.

The musical guests will perform on a stage at one end of the ice.

"Sonia and I realized a couple of years ago that we were going to work together and that we should do it now when we have a chance, so we don't regret it later," Browning said, acknowledging that he is not a good ballet partner and she is not a professional skater.

"So we try to keep it real at the level that we can come together on."

Rodriguez and Antonijevic will dance a couple of numbers together, including the pas de deux from Swan Lake.

"And we asked Scott Hamilton to do his ballet comedy act," Browning laughs. "So you get what it should be like and what it shouldn't.

"When Sonia is dancing with Alex, I'll be off-stage, but always in white light. I'm either remembering myself with Sonia, or wishing I could be that guy. There is some kind of jealousy. You make of it what you want. But I can't get out of the box (of light).

"That scene is the bridge between dancing and skating."

In typical self-effacing style, Browning said he didn't figure there would be a sequel to last year's Gotta Dance!

"I didn't expect a second one. A Canadian kid gets a show on NBC? C'mon."

The cast rehearses today and tomorrow at Copps as the skating year enters two of its most frenetic months. Olympic-eligibles just finished the season-opener at Skate America and move into Skate Canada at Quebec City this week. After Friday's show, Browning does the pro team competition Ice Wars, and heads to Lake Placid to begin training for Stars on Ice. He'll be at the Sears Canadian Open, a pro/am competition, but will skate only an exhibition.

"I just feel like I'm not competitive in the short program (a technical event, under the hybrid rules)," he explains. "And it's a competition. It would be a great paycheque but I always told myself to be brave enough to know when it's time not to do things. I'm not confident I could win the short ... and that bugs me."

That, too, is pure Browning. He may be one of the great showmen the game has ever known, and he may have moved into the ranks of elite choreographers by designing this year's short program for world medallist Takeshi Honda, but what he is above all else is an athlete. He won four world titles largely because he was by far the best competitor of his era.

And, even as he stands at the crossroads of his career, that competitive urge doesn't seem to have abated much.

smilton@thespec.com or 905-526-3268.

Entertainment lineup

What: Kurt Browning's Gotta Skate!

When: Friday, Nov. 1, 7 p.m.

Where: Copps Coliseum

Who: Kurt Browning, Scott Hamilton, Brian Orser, Steven Cousins, Lu Chen, Jose Chouinard, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, Sonia Rodriguez, Alex Antonijevic, Edwin and The Pressure, Anti-Gravity, Deborah Cox.