Stage: Ice Cool!
Olympic Gold medal winner Robin Cousins talks to Andrew Kay about his return to creating a truly personal skating show with Ice at The Brighton Centre
You must be greatly relieved that, for the first time since that Electric Ice, you’ve got creative control.
“Yes, complete creative control.”
I could see in your Holiday On Ice shows, at the heart was Robin Cousins, but moments I thought ‘This isn’t Robin Cousins’.
“I was creating for an international market whereas this is more sophisticated. I can’t say more ‘more adult’ because I think a nine or ten year old who likes dance and movement, and music and lights will have fun.”
Glamour yes, but that doesn’t have to mean sequins and feathers...
“Thank you.” [laughs]
You made your name in competitive skating, not because – well, you were a fantastic technician – but because you did something new.
“It wasn’t what I did, but how I did it.”
You came in a wave of new UK skaters, with yourself and John Curry. Do you think it’s odd that skating is an olympic sport, but at the same time an art form?
“My dad said, It’s not a sport, the sport’s in the training, the art’s in the execution’. I don’t want people sitting on the edge of their seats going ‘Oooh!’… I want people to enjoy the beauty of the movement, and know that it’s of a certain technical level.”
And will it be technical?
“It will have to be. Oh, yeah.”
It must have been interesting to go into your producer’s office with one idea and come out asked to re-conceive something that you had done many years ago, Electric Ice, that he can’t possibly have seen…
[Laughs] “He was five.”
Was it heartening when he said we want you to go back to that, which you do so well?
“Yeah, he’s one of the new breed of Western producers. But we’re working also with Paul Elliott and Duncan Weldon who have a wealth of experience.”
Holiday On Ice was a big part of your life for a long time. Have you learnt a lot?
“I did! I know what I loved, I know what works, I know what will needle an audience for the right reasons. It’s like yourself… you know me, I love to hear everybody’s opinion; good, bad, and indifferent. And then you juggle them around and you then look at things with a new pair of eyes. But also you surround yourself with people who, over those years, you’ve learned, tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. You gravitate to the people who you know get it, and get you, and can finish each other’s sentences and cut corners.
Maurice Luttikhuis is a musical genius in being able to give me the feel and the flavour and everything I want. He’s really excited about this because we can go back just to the piano. He said, ‘Can we do just piano and harp?’. I went, ‘that’s all I want, I don’t need the bells and whistles’. Because I want the bells and whistles later when we do the swing stuff. And if you’ve got three women on the ice, dressed in these beautiful diaphanous floaty costumes it just needs enhancing. You can’t compete with great music. You need to find music that elevates the choreography and the work that you’re doing. At the moment, there’s a few pieces I’m unsure of but I’m excited by the fact that I’m unsure.”
Is that creatively more demanding?
I think we all do our best when we’re outside our comfort zone, don’t we? I’m going to be a lot more exposed than I have been, but then again I did it 30 years ago and got away with it. And now I look at those videos and go ‘Eek… oh… ooh, I still quite like that bit’ [chuckles]. There’s still stuff to draw from.
How hard is it to find new things to do with skaters, technically?
“How hard is it to find new things to do a dance stage, or with ballet? You just create a new vocabulary.”
But you were stealing things from gymnastics and from dance and putting it on skates. They were so new. I saw you tap dance on ice…
[chuckles] “Yes… I’m still doing that! These days on YouTube.”
You record all your music. Are you going to sing this year?
“I am not, at this point, going to sing. One of my skaters might though.”
Well, you’ve sung before!
“I have but I have a skater who has a better voice than me.”
Will he sing on the ice, live?
“He may sing on the ice, yeah.”
Will the new show appeal to your loyal audience?
“I don’t want people to be intimidated. My problem is, I want to make sure people understand this is not Holiday On Ice. At the same time, I don’t want people to go, ‘Well, if it’s not Holiday On Ice, I don’t want to see it’. If people are loyal Holiday On Ice fans, they will know my work. And they will know the type of thing I like to do.”
You’re not going to perform. I understand, because you’ve had so much surgery, there’s virtually nothing of the real Robin Cousins below the waist, it’s all fake…
“There hasn’t been for 40 years!”
Do you ever get the urge to actually be able to do it yourself?
“Yes, of course. And I have to say that I got sated by the Olympic special we did with Dancing On Ice. Just a minute and a half. That was it. That was fine. In the old days I was very bow-legged. I have a 21-degree difference in my gait now, with my knees. Arlene Philips stood there and laughed out loud in the street when she saw me walk from behind. She said, ‘I can’t believe I’m looking at you walking with straight legs’. I said, ‘Please, that’s lovely, but don’t laugh at me’. It’s unusual learning how to walk again and a bit of learning how to skate again. I fell over quite a few times. You go to put your foot… and… oops! It’s not where you expect it to be.”
Robin Cousins’ Ice, The Brighton Centre, 22 Jan–2 Feb 2014
Box office 0844 847 1515
www.brightoncentre.co.uk
