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Last chance to see Kurt Browning in Stars on Ice
Legendary skater ending three-decade career with iconic tour which comes to Hamilton on May 6, Steve Milton writes.
| Source: |
The Hamilton Spectator |
| Date: |
March 3, 2023 |
| Author: |
Steve Milton |
The first move in one of Kurt Browning's solos - choreographed by his
wife Alissa Czisny - will consist of a simple, but deeply
metaphorical, snap of his fingers.
"It symbolizes for me just how quickly all those years have gone by,"
the Canadian skating legend muses.
After Stars on Ice concludes its 20-city North American tour in early
June, exactly two weeks before his 57th birthday, the incomparable
Browning will retire as a cast member.
So the show's May 6 stop at FirstOntario Centre will be the final
local chance for Browning's legion of fans to watch him skate in the
iconic high-performance tour with which he has become more synonymous
than even Scott Hamilton, his longtime friend and mentor for whom
Stars was originally created.
"I've always taken Stars on Ice very seriously, it's my identity as a
professional skater," said Browning, who calculates he has been a
"full cast" (two solos and all the group numbers) in 30 different
years since the late 1980s, usually doing 90 shows per year.
"This is like graduation for me, the gold watch retirement where you
pack up the box of things from your desk, shake your head and ask ‘Was
I really here for this long?'"
He has been here, in every imaginable skating incarnation, since his
father Dewey built him a front-yard rink in the Alberta foothills more
than half a century ago.
Browning was the first person to ever land an accredited quadruple
jump; won four world championships in five years and was second in the
other; captured three Canadian and three world professional
championships; expanded Brian Orser's template of morphing incredible
speed, athleticism and technical innovation into a vast and varied
artistic palette; became a world-class choreographer; owned the
microphone as a TV commentator; and has never lost his youthful zest
for physically and verbally expressing himself.
He has been Canada's athlete of the year, is a member of the Order of
Canada and the Canadian and world figure skating halls of fame, and
Canada's Walk of Fame. And that only scratches the surface of the
honours accorded to one of the most fan-accessible and so-damn-funny
skaters in history.
There is no style of music, no human emotion, no skating detail, that
the consummate showman hasn't dissected and amplified on the ice. That
took root in groundbreaking programs like "Singing in the Rain" and
"Casablanca" while he was still an "amateur" but really came to life
with Stars.
"I love Scott's quote that Stars is where champions go to get better,"
Browning told The Spectator.
"I feel great and I'm going to skate really well in the show but it's
just harder to be good every time you put on the skates when you're as
old as I am. It's time to let someone else take over."
To build his other solo, "which is kind of a gift to myself," Browning
has been burrowing into YouTube to pull snippets of his previous Stars
on Ice programs together for his farewell performance. It will be
skated to, appropriately, "Who are You" by The Who.
He says the video time travelling has given him a new appreciation for
his 30-plus years in Stars, and his long-term commitment to technical
execution and demanding artistry.
"I hope I'm known for being physical because my programs are hard,
super physical and athletic. I don't want to ever have to choose,
athlete or artist, I want to be remembered as both."
He will be.
Three-time world champion Elvis Stojko will also tour with Stars - as
will Patrick Chan, so 10 of the 14 men's world championships Canada
has ever won will be represented - and earlier this week the former
rivals blocked out a two-man routine they'll perform to hard-driving
rock.
"Basically, it's a chance to acknowledge the longevity we've enjoyed,
the respect we have for each other and our friendship along the way,"
Browning says.
Stojko and Browning will be mic'ed so they can quip to each other and
the crowd, reminiscent of the 1993 exhibition gala in Prague, where
Browning won his final global title and Stojko was second, Canada's
only one-two men's finish ever.
It also hearkens back to Copps Coliseum, six weeks before Prague, when
Browning and Stojko staged their memorable oh-yeah-well-watch-this
impromptu jump-off during practice at the Canadian nationals. That
event pushed Canadian skating into the big time with crowds exceeding
15,000 most nights. Many insiders called Browning's narrow victory the
greatest head-to-head men's competition in Canadian championship
history.
"That was one of the most iconic competitions I've ever been in,"
Browning says. "I've had a lot of success in Hamilton. I won a
Canadian professional championship there, we filmed my own show
("Gotta Skate") there several times, and when we changed filming Stars
there from Toronto, it changed the crowd's relationship with the
show."
Browning had announced his retirement from Stars in 2015 but was asked
to be a guest performer in 2016 and soon found himself back in the
full-time cast, other than the lockdown year and in 2018 when "the
team of the century" Olympians were the central focus.
He'll continue to do smaller one-off shows and carnivals, many of them
with Czisny, "so we can make some more memories together," but this
will be it for Stars. Hamilton has been a tour stop longer than any
other city so fittingly, this will be the last skating event at
FirstOntario Centre before it's shuttered for two years of dramatic
renovations.
The solo that Czisny - the two-time U.S. champion who will also be
skating - has designed for her husband is a slower piece "less about
skating, and more about connecting," said Browning.
"It has room to breathe so I can look up at the audience."
The audience that has been looking at him, so often in awe, for
decades and decades.
Stars on Ice
FirstOntario Centre, Saturday, May 6, 7:30 p.m.
Cast: Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko, Patrick Chan, Piper Gilles & Paul Poirier, Alexa Knierim & Brandon Frazier, Madison Chock & Evan Bates, Keegan Messing, Madeline Schizas, Alissa Czisny, Jason Brown, Loena Hendrickx.
Tickets: Ticketmaster.ca; $30 (plus fees) and up.
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