The 'silly science' of Stars On Ice
With Kurt Browning at the helm, the annual skating tour across Canada will take fans on a whimsical journey behind some things that make its athletes do what they do.
You hear the theme for Stars On Ice Canada this year is “The Science of Skating,” and if you’re like me, well, let’s just say it conjures up a rather wide variety of thoughts. One of which just might be this …
“Well, that doesn’t exactly sound like your typical Stars On Ice show.”
Which would be music to the ears of Canadian skating legend Kurt Browning, who happens to be the guy who came up with that idea as the 2024 tour’s director and choreographer. Because you see, that’s exactly what he hopes you end up thinking when you see his final creation, which will be filled with plenty of the trademark Browning whimsy that fans came to love during the 30 years he performed in SOI — a run which ended in 2023.
While the 2024 version will contain some of the “normal trappings” of an SOI show with opening and closing numbers, along with solos from each cast member, he’s quick to call it “a non-typical Stars On Ice show.”
“We actually kind of hope that this is a lark. There isn’t really even a big group number where we’re serious. It’s literally a tongue in cheek, light look at this thing,” Browning said over the phone from Halifax, where the tour makes its traditional starting point tonight at Scotiabank Centre (it finishes May 16 in Victoria, with another 10 stops in between).
By “this thing,” he is referring to the “science-y” thing, which was originally born with Browning wanting to showcase cast member Keegan Messing’s backflip, and in a way that would break down the technical aspects of the trick. The science behind it all, if you will.
“I thought maybe we could analyze the backflip and show them how long it is and how high and how fast he goes. Basically, from that conversation in my head, I thought ‘why don’t we do that with everything?’ So that’s how it started, and how the theme of ‘the science of skating’ was born,” he said.
Soon enough, though, things veered off in a completely different direction. And given who we’re talking about here, it shouldn’t surprise you that humour quickly took over a theme that sounds like it’s meant to carry a bit of an academic bent. Um, not so much anymore, as you’ll learn.
“Because it’s me, I was building science-y things — the actual mechanics of how a blade melts the ice and stuff like that — but alongside it was all the silly jokes that were starting to happen. Pretty soon, that took over,” Browning explained. “So yes, it started out with a science theme, but it really went to a silly science place really fast. So it is ‘The Science of Skating,’ but man, it took me into this other thing (not that he’s complaining in any way).
“The joke is that there is this skating scientist and she’s a skater and she loves skating, but as a scientist, she is fascinated by the relationship between the audience and the skater. She reached out to Kurt Browning and said ‘so can I, with my team of scientists, study the show?’ And Kurt Browning says ‘yeah, come on in and enjoy the show! We’ll put you right on the ice for the show and you can study the skaters and do tests and things.’ That’s when the Skating Observation Institute, with the initials SOI, starts studying Stars On Ice, with the initials SOI. And that hokey joke continues the whole show … It’s just this ongoing thing, so it’s a little bit more like a play than most Stars On Ice shows, for sure.”
As part of the production, each cast member will assume an alter ego at various points — a science-y alter ego, that is — with costumes created by Mathieu Caron (“they are so good,” Browning says) that bring “a retro feel to the whole thing.” And hell yeah, Browning is having a blast with the theme this show eventually morphed into since he started working on it back in the fall.
“We’re having so much fun doing this show where every skater has a dual personality. They’re themselves — they’re Piper Gilles, they’re Patrick Chan — but they’re also their other self, which is a skating scientist studying the show. Each skater even has their own name. They have different names as the scientist than they do as the skater,” he said. “Satoko (Miyahara) as her scientist self actually stops Ilia (Malinin) and asks for his autograph as he’s leaving the ice, and they do a selfie. So the show keeps trying to continue, but it often gets delayed and held hostage or sabotaged by the scientists. And that’s the show.”
And that’s how the show’s theme is now “The Silly Science of Skating.”
(an aside: all of this talk got me thinking about that 1980s cult classic movie, “Weird Science.” Turns out you’ll hear some music from that flick in at some point during this show. “Just to get you in the mood,” Browning says).
And for those of you who come to SOI purely to see some high-quality skating … well, there’s plenty of room for that, too. This year’s edition features two of the champions from last month’s World Championships in Montreal, in the person of Malinin, who won the men’s title in jaw-dropping fashion, along with pairs champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps of Canada, who authored a storybook finish in the city in which they call home. Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who earned a dramatic silver medal in Montreal, are also front and centre in this production.
While he wasn’t originally planning for it, Browning also wants to acknowledge that this is the Stars On Ice farewell for Canadian favourite Patrick Chan. The three-time World champion announced earlier this week in an Instagram post that, with he and wife Liz Putnam expecting a second child, the time is right for him to step aside.
“It’s great to have Patrick back … I think he’s really happy that he came back to skating and got to do (the tour) a few more times, and that’s a blessing,” said Browning. “But I did expect him to stay around longer, so I’m a little surprised that (ending things) did happen. He told us so late, so I couldn’t really build anything huge the way Jeff Buttle built me something (last year). But we will definitely acknowledge his relationships with Stars.”
While Browning has worked as a primary choreographer for Stars on two previous occasions, this year’s tour marks the first time he isn’t having to combine those duties with worrying about his own skating. And he admits there’s a certain freedom about that, saying “I’m having fun, man. It’s so much easier to concentrate when you’re not in the show and do a better job as a fully committed choreographer/director instead of trying to survive as a 55-year-old figure skater or whatever I was.”
When Browning hung up his Stars On Ice skates for good last year, he knew deep down inside he wasn’t completely done with the tour. It’s a sentiment he expressed to me back in the fall, and one that has come to fruition in pretty much exactly the way he had hoped.
“Somehow, even a reference as a creative,” he said about his ambitions for the ideal way to stay involved. “This year I am the creative (lead). If the show moves forward and moves forward with me, then I don’t think I would always want the full responsibility as the director/creator/choreographer. I have a plan, but let’s get through this year and then we’ll worry about that.”
And he’s hardly alone in putting this year’s production together. As Browning puts it, “every choreographer has a helper,” and his happens to be the person closest to him — his wife, Alissa Czisny, a former Stars On Ice cast member herself who also bowed out from touring a year ago.
“She’s right there and she’s done shows for a long, long time. And she knows me, so she knows how to make sure that I get to centre ice when that’s where I should be standing and talking,” Browning said of his wife’s contributions. “She carries a piece of paper and writes down everything. She listens to a conversation and she knows that we need a fake apple. She knows that I need to buy more rolls of paper. There’s just so much going on and she makes it happen. She made up, basically by herself, one of the numbers on the ice. I choreographed it off the ice, she made it on the ice. So she took the lead on that one.
“And it’s been a blast, it’s been so much fun. We’re creating something together and that’s always unifying for anybody when you create something together, so we’re having a good time. But it’s also convenient, because I never know when I’m going to want to work on the show. I can be sitting eating and then all of a sudden I’ll have an idea and then all of a sudden, we’re working on the show.”
They’ve been working furiously over the past few days in Halifax, guiding the cast through rehearsals and aiming to get everything just right before the curtain goes up on Thursday night. Besides the skaters we’ve already mentioned, the cast also includes Canadian skating legend Elvis Stojko, the tour’s most accomplished skater with two Olympic silver medals and three World titles; two-time Canadian champion Maddie Schizas and 2023 World silver medallist Loena Hendrickx of Belgium. As we mentioned in this space last week, Canadian champions Kaiya Ruiter (Ottawa) and Wesley Chiu (Vancouver) are each getting a guest appearance on the tour, which Browning is happy to see.
“I think that’s pretty sweet (for them). You know, a lot is learned in the dressing room and a lot is learned on the ice. It’s nice for a young skater to shift priority all of a sudden after the competitions are over and have to create something that you’re going to (show) on the ice with Piper and Paul and Ilia Malinin,” he said. “So it’s like ‘oh my God, I’ve got to create something that’s good.’ It’s nice for them to shift their priority away from competition to this for a little bit. I hate to say this, but amateur skaters don’t realize how much you learn when you create a program for showcase. So I’m really hoping that they have that good experience.”
Most of all, he hopes the folks in the audience have as much fun as he’d had putting the whole thing together. And he’s had a whole bunch of that.
“I feel like a long time ago, when you went to a Stars show, you saw a lot more of the skaters having fun. A lot more of the skaters’ personality,” he said. “(With this tour) you get to hear their voices a little tiny bit, and with the silliness comes a little more exposure to what they’re really like. So that’s my goal, and maybe get a giggle or three.”
For those who missed it last week, here’s the full list of tour dates:
Tonight — Halifax (Scotiabank Centre), 7 p.m.
Friday — Moncton, N.B. (Avenir Centre), 7:30 p.m.
Sunday — Ottawa (Canadian Tire Centre), 4 p.m.
April 30 — Laval, Que. (Place Bell), 7 p.m.
May 3 — Toronto (Scotiabank Arena), 7:30 p.m.
May 4 — St. Catharines, Ont. (Meridian Centre), 7:30 p.m.
May 5 — London, Ont. (Budweiser Gardens), 4 p.m.
May 9 — Regina (Brandt Centre), 7 p.m.
May 10 — Calgary (Scotiabank Saddledome), 7:30 p.m.
May 12 — Edmonton (Rogers Place), 4 p.m.
May 14 — Vancouver (Rogers Arena), 7 p.m.
May 16 — Victoria (Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre), 7 p.m.
Tickets for all shows can be purchased here.