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Kurt Browning: "I just don't think that skating should be predictable."
| Source: |
Absolute Skating |
| Date: |
July 15, 2012 |
| Author: |
Tina Tyan |
In June 2012, Kurt Browning turned 46. In the year leading up to that
birthday, he's performed in some 45 shows around the world, co-hosted
Battle of the Blades, commentated all the major skating events
for Canadian network CBC, taught a few seminars, and choreographed and
directed two different skating tours. He's promoted Red Rose Tea's
Share the Warmth campaign, painted an Angry Bird for charity, released
a children's book, T is for Tutu, that he co-authored with his
wife (ballet dancer Sonia Rodriguez), judged a round of the Young
Artists' Showcase, and played in a few charity golf tournaments, all
while raising two young boys.
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that almost 20 years after turning
pro, four-time World champion (1989-91, 1993) Kurt Browning is busier
than ever. You don't have to get very far into a conversation with him
to understand why. The Canadian skater overflows with energy, and he
channels that energy into a passionate commitment to his
sport.
Every now and then, Kurt has the opportunity to share his passion for
skating with young skaters through seminars. Rather than trying to
break things down technically, his seminars are designed to make kids
appreciate their skating more and to step onto the ice with a greater
consciousness of what they are doing.
"What I think is lacking, especially in skating in the ladies' event
in Canada, is the joy. They're so hung up on what they're doing, and
they're not doing that well. And I want the younger kids - if there
are some out there who have a chance to compete - I want them to
remember that it's supposed to be fun," he said.
Kurt believes that it is especially important for kids to enjoy their
skating due to the sacrifices that they or their family often have to
make for it.
He emphasizes to the kids in his seminars: "Hardly any of you guys are
gonna ever get to compete at a high level. So it's even more
important that you enjoy your own skating, and that you've given up
the party, or you gave up that dress, or your parents gave up that
extra car - whatever! Something was given up for you to learn how to
do that single Axel. So you need to respect how hard it was to get
that Axel. And have fun landing it! And enjoy your skating!"
A crucial part of that respect and enjoyment is awareness, of stepping
out onto the ice with a desire to push yourself a little more, to try
something a little different, to make each session special.
"How are you going to get better if you never try and curve a little
bit more? [Ice dancer/choreographer] Shae-Lynn Bourne gets on the ice
and every single day I watch her creating something new or
just...she's curious. Kids are not curious about their
skating. They're so happy to just be the same as they were yesterday,"
he said. "And I'm like, NO, let's tilt your arms. Tilt your
arms, tilt your arms further! Bend your knees! WHOA! Did you ever
think that you could do that?' And everyone's like, ‘I didn't really
think I could do that!' It's because you never tried!"
Ultimately, he says, "My seminars are about [bringing out] the joy and
the fun and the self-recognition in their skating."
As skaters rise in the competitive ranks and get more involved in the
sport, challenges can arise. Figure skating demands a lot of time and
sacrifice from young skaters and puts them in the position of being
judged time and time again. They may have to give up many "regular"
kid activities to pursue their goals. However, Kurt believes the
benefits of participating in figure skating far outweigh the
negatives.
Being judged constantly in competitive settings impacts the
self-esteem of kids, but so does every day high school life, he
says. Kids are constantly in situations where they question
themselves, be it "somebody snickering you at the hallway in high
school" or "I'm sorry, but he went and picked her to dance with him
instead of me!" or "she's got a nicer shirt." He believes there are
important lessons to be learned from competition.
"I hate to say it, but I think we're a little bit too much like, 'ok,
we're going to go to school, and we're going to play, and everyone
gets a medal!' No. Everyone doesn't get a medal. The first
three people get medals, everyone else lost. And the kids need
to learn that when it's your turn to have a moment, then it's
special!" he said. "You work hard, you find something you're good at,
you really worship and respect the integrity of the work that went
into it, and then you win a medal. And it's finally your turn. Or you
never win a medal, and it teaches you to appreciate something
else. Life is not going to give you nice things, so you have to go
take it!"
He's not worried that young skaters will lose balance in their lives
by not being able to participate in "regular" everyday
activities.
"How many kids are replacing the hours and hours of kids who go into
sports with something that's as good as sports, to teach you how to
lose, teach you how to win, how to show up at 7:00, how to be
responsible to your coach, to your parents, to the other kids around
you, to be a teammate, to stand up by yourself, all these things!" he
said. "So I think, yeah you will miss out on things. I did. But,
because I loved what I was doing, I was given two-fold back."
One of the biggest challenges skaters face as they mature is increased
self-consciousness and self-awareness. Younger children are often
better performers because they generally don't suffer from an
overabundance of self-consciousness. But as they grow older, even a
gregarious, outgoing personality like Kurt's can be hampered by too
much self-awareness, even after years of performing.
"The first year as a world title holder, I couldn't tie my shoes. I
just thought everyone was staring at me. And a year before that I
wanted everyone to stare at me. 'For God's sake, there's
someone in the corner, I don't think that they saw me! I'd better do
another triple Axel, make sure they saw it'," he laughed. "It was
because I thought World champions didn't make mistakes, because the
ones that I saw were all gods. When you won Worlds, you were Brian
Orser [2-time Olympic silver medalist, 1987 World champion], or you
know, Russians, strange people. They won Worlds, not me."
Learning to deal with self-awareness is an inevitable part of life,
and Kurt believes that figure skating gives kids the strength to do so
in other parts of their life.
"I tell skaters that if you can stand at center ice, and wait for
music and dance to the music on skinny little blades wearing something
that your mother made for you...if you can get through that, there
ain't much else left out there that's gonna intimidate you," he
said.
Even so, "I'm 20 years as a professional and self-awareness happens to
me all the time. I skate 8 nights in a row with one or two little
mistakes and then I have a really bad night because I didn't do it
naturally, I did it trying to force it. It's that extra turn of a
screw when you force it and you break the screw head off...So
self-awareness can kill you. And then you have to get used to
it. Because it's part of life, and it's great."
These days, Kurt has the chance to watch competitive skaters go
through those moments of self-awareness up close, as a commentator for
CBC. As a result, he often gets questioned about things that happen in
competition, particularly regarding scoring system-related
controversies. While he doesn't think the current scoring system is
perfect, he does believe it lends credibility to the sport as a sport,
and is better in many ways from a competitor's standpoint.
Some people complain about skaters who make multiple mistakes in their
programs, but still score high or even win. Kurt likens the way
skaters can accumulate points, offsetting the mistakes they make, to
the scoring in any other sport.
"Like any sport, if you capitalize on the right moment, there you
are," he said. "You are in the right place at the right time; you are
buying yourself the ability to have mistakes later. 'They got scored
on *three* times in the last five minutes!' Yeah, but they got 7 goals
before that so who cares."
One of the biggest improvements the current scoring system has made,
in Kurt's opinion, is that it gives skaters the chance to come from
behind and still succeed.
"We need to have a way for these athletes to feel that they have a
chance. And I love, absolutely love that you're in 6th place
and you're looking at 8 points away, and now you're thinking...'I can
get to 2nd'. In my generation, that was an impossibility. So, what do
you like more? I personally think that it's really important that you
can come 8th and still be, depending on how close you are to 1st, able
to have a shot at [it]", he said.
From a viewer's perspective, though, he does acknowledge that the
system doesn't reward moments as well as the old system, and
understands why fans may be frustrated when a skater's performance
captures the crowd or the night, but doesn't win the
competition.
"I'm a romantic," he said, "so I rarely think about the points that
much while I'm commentating or while I'm trying to be a fan or while
I'm trying to enjoy a skater or a competition... I want to be moved by
somebody."
As a commentator and mentor, Kurt Browning has insight and sympathy
into being a viewer of skating, but at heart he is still very much a
performer. In recent years, he has toured in Europe and Asia, as well
as in cities across the US and Canada. In just the last year, his
schedule has taken him from South Korea to Japan to China. He has
found the experience of skating outside of North America to be very
rewarding.
"To go to Europe is... I mean, they have their special people, and we
have our special people that we love and respect and are our
generation of skaters that we look up to, and so do they. So if you
can go there and leave an impression in someone else's backyard, it's
pretty cool," he said.
"And then, just simply put - when you go to Asia, it's crazy fun
because the audience is such a different feeling. And to have fans
waiting for you to get on the bus? It's like time travel for me, it's
like going back 15 years in time...it's fun!" he laughed. "When
Geoffrey [Tyler] and I went to Korea, it was nuts. It was an
experience. I said, you do something for 20 years, you think you've
pretty much felt what everything feels like, but skating in front of
those audiences those three days was really cool. We were
floating every night. Just floating home."
For the last 3 years, Kurt has been a co-host on Battle of the
Blades, the hit CBC show pairing hockey players and figure
skaters. Despite great ratings and positive buzz, CBC placed Battle
of the Blades on hiatus this year due to major budget cuts. Kurt
wasn't surprised that this happened.
"I knew it wasn't going to come back because CBC was making huge cuts,
and it's a very expensive show, so even though the numbers were really
good, I kind of knew in my gut that it wasn't going to get - it's just
too expensive," he said.
Co-hosting TV shows, touring around the world, teaching seminars, and
commentating figure skating all have been a fairly regular part of
Kurt Browning's schedule for years. In 2011, however, Kurt took on a
whole new venture, choreographing and co-directing not one, but two
full touring shows, Celebration on Ice and Stars on Ice,
with his good friend, actor/musician Geoffrey Tyler.
In typical Kurt fashion, the fact that he ended up choreographing two
shows wasn't particularly planned. Celebration on Ice more or
less came about due to Kurt texting producer Jean-Michel Bombardier on
impulse in the midst of a conversation with Geoffrey. Kurt and
Geoffrey had been talking and coming up with some fun ideas, which
moved Kurt to ask Jean-Michel who the choreographer for Celebration
on Ice was going to be. When the original choreographer, Brian
Orser, couldn't do the show, Jean-Michel called Kurt up and offered
him the job. Kurt accepted it as a joint venture with Geoffrey.
"It was actually great because we learned a lot about how to work
together. And so it helped us to do Stars to do that. But it
was LONG hours. Really long, long hours on the ice at the Granite
Club. Like, we'd do 8 hours of choreography and writing notes, and the
beer afterwards would taste so good. But we loved it. He loves
to create, and I guess I do, too, and we made a Christmas show that
was really unusual, and the skaters had a blast, and the people were
kind of surprised to see the live music mixed in and the
casualness."
While Celebration on Ice more or less fell in Kurt's lap, doing
Stars on Ice was a more considered decision.
He explained, "I had ideas of doing my own tour and decided not to,
but I still got that itch to choreograph something. And I thought, if
it is the end of my career, it would be nice if I could control it,
which would mean doing Singing in the Rain again. Maybe skating to
Supertramp finally, which I'd been wanting to do since the
mid-90s. Not as a solo, but as a group. I thought, you know, there's
only one way that's going to happen, and that's if I'm the boss. So I
thought when I got the job - when they gave me the job - that it would
be a one-time deal, that I would just choreograph Stars and do my
ideas. Then that didn't happen 'cause the choreography time was too
short, and we had no title sponsor. So I had to come up with a new
show. Now, maybe next year, I'll do it again. I have to decide, we'll
see. But it seems like they want me back, so that's good."
That consciousness of coming towards the end of his career has driven
a lot of Kurt's decision making in recent years.
"I've really kept myself busy on purpose. I took a lot of work. A lot
because it's at the end of my career, so I'm enjoying skating. I don't
know if my knee will hurt, or if I just decide that's it, or it's time
for me to cut back... so I've said I'll do those shows. And I'm going
to China because I've never been there!" he said. "So, I'm too
busy. Way too busy. This year's the first spring/ summer of my
life where I've really got to think about, all right, what am I going
to do about my skating career. Do I see an end to it, or how do I want
to finish it?"
He continued, "It wouldn't be my swan song 'cause, as [former Stars
on Ice choreographer] Michael Seibert once said, who knows, maybe
Disney wants you to play the Wicked Witch, you know? Or the Evil
Sorcerer... You don't want to say that you're retired in case
something like that comes up. It would be fun if Ashley Wagner won
Worlds and said, 'would you be the Old Man in the Mountain in my TV
special?' Right on! So I don't want to quit, because I want to be open
to options."
Even if he doesn't quit, Kurt Browning will eventually have to scale
back on actively performing. He doesn't have a clear cut plan on where
he wants to take his career from that point.
"I love kids, and my seminars are a lot of fun. So if I could figure
out a way to bring that into my life, then I will. And I hope that I
commentate for as long as people want to listen to it or as long as it
feels right," he said.
Despite his past choreography work for solo skaters and current role
as main choreographer on the Stars on Ice tour, Kurt doesn't
envision choreography as his full time career.
"I don't want to be a choreographer. I want to be a part of skating,
but... you know, to work like [choreographers] David Wilson or Lori
Nichol or even Jeffrey Buttle is working so hard right now, doing a
lot of choreography... I don't see myself as that person. And even my
role as choreographer within Stars on Ice, I would gladly be
co-choreographer and let someone else take the lead. I think it's
important that it's not the same person for 8 years in a row," he
explained. "I'd like to stay in choreography, but I don't think I
think of myself as a choreographer. I'm somebody who has something to
offer, and in the right environment, I do a very good job. But it has
to be the right environment, and it's not something that I'm going to
do as a living. It's not my goal."
He is open, however, to being a part of a creative team, or pitching
ideas for ensemble numbers, or working on particularly interesting
challenges.
"(Yuzuru) Hanyu is coming to work with Brian Orser. And so they've
asked me if I can choreograph an exhibition number for him. I'm like,
that's a challenge. All right, yes, I'd like to do that! So
that's the kind of thing that I'd like to do to stay in touch with
skating when I don't perform anymore. And TV specials. I miss TV
specials. I love making TV specials. I wish we had money so I could be
the Wicked Witch. The cross-dressing Wicked Witch. I would love
that!"
Whatever he ends up doing in his career, fans should likely expect the
unexpected.
"I just don't think that skating should be predictable. I don't like
when people go, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Kurt Browning', and you sit
there, and you already know what you're going to get. I've always
hated that."
For the next while, at least, Kurt plans on relaxing for a bit. When
asked what his plans were for the summer, Kurt said: "I don't know. I
have a 10-year project, that my wife calls it, and it involves the
little bit of land around our cottage. [It] has all these rock piles
from when they cleared the land 100 years ago for pasture. And they're
not pretty to look at. One of my favorite things, like some women like
shoes - I like rock walls. Whenever I get to a city, I don't know, I
just really love rock walls. So I'm building my own rock walls all
over the cottage. I get up at 5 in the morning, and I go out and put
on music, and I just build. And come September, I'm always pretty cut
because I've been lifting rocks all summer. And so this summer, I plan
on putting more rocks on top of each other. Teaching my kids how to
rollerblade. And diving into a lake as much as I can."
Note: this interview was conducted in mid-May. Kurt has evidently
decided not to hang up his skates quite yet, as he is now set to
compete for the first time in six years at the Medal Winners Open in
October. Best of luck to him!
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