Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue, Yuna Kim, Michelle Kwan, David Wilson, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo at "2010 All That Skate LA" press conference
The cover of the program for the ice show “2010 All That Skate LA” bears the words, “Share the Dream.” Starring this year’s Olympic Champion Yuna Kim, Olympic Silver Medalist/five-time World Figure Skating Champion Michelle Kwan and a host of other Olympic, World and National champions, the show plays the Staples Center in Los Angeles October 2 and October 3.
It certainly has a dream cast: Three out of the four reigning Olympic Champions – besides Kim, pairs Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo of China and ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada – three-time U.S. Champion Johnny Weir, Olympic Silver medalists/four-time World ice dance medalists Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto and so many more.
For me personally, the show also provides at the very least a wish come true, for it offers the chance to see Kwan perform locally for the first time in several years, recovered from the injury that forced her withdrawal from the 2006 Winter Olympics and taking some time away from her educational and other activities; she was appointed the first U.S. Public Diplomacy Envoy in 2006 and this June was named to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.
Kwan, the Olympic champs and “All That Skate LA” artistic director/choreographer David Wilson gathered for a press conference and rehearsal October 1 at Staples. “I’m so happy to be in Los Angeles,” said Kim, who has recently moved to L.A. and will soon announce her new coach, ”especially here in the Staples Center, where I won the World Championship [in 2009]. I’m happy I’ll be skating with all these great champions.”
For Kwan, skating at Staples is wonderful because it’s in her hometown, she won her sixth of nine U.S. senior national titles at Staples in 2002 and, having performed “All That Skate” first in Kim’s native South Korea, “it’s an honor” to skate with her again here, she said. Having just turned 30, Kwan confessed to feeling “so old.” After all, she said, Kim, who just turned 20 and trained at Ice Castle in Lake Arrowhead as a youngster, “told me, ‘I met you in the bathroom in Lake Arrowhead!’”
The show is clearly a “dream come true” for the participants: all expressed how happy and honored they felt to be involved, and Wilson, who also helmed the Korean shows, said, “Sometimes I have to actually pinch myself! I’ve had a chance to choreograph for a few of the skaters individually, and to choreograph in a group setting is so fun and pressure-free.”
And as the program cover indicates, the audience is meant to be in on the dream. Said Kwan, who fulfilled her own childhood dream of going to the Olympics, “Hopefully, little boys and girls [watching], who have their own dreams, will be motivated to have their dreams come true.”
If the opening-number rehearsal was any indication, they’ll be coming true to artistic lighting, pyrotechnics and of course, wonderful skating by a dynamic dream cast.