Skating With Celebrites: Episode 1
Celebs Discover The Kiss & Cry Of Skating
Recap By Allie Axel
January 19, 2004
Let the fun begin. With great trepidation, I sit down to watch the inaugural Skating with Celebrities. The announcer reminds us that the celebrities are fearless. In addition, they experienced a lot of frustration. He tells us that because of their determination, this will be a fierce competition.
We are introduced to our six contestants and then meet our hosts Scott Hamilton and Summer Sanders. Scott tells us the contestants will skate 1 routine tonight. Their score will be combined with their scores in the next show and the pair with the lowest number will be eliminated. They introduce us to our judges, Sir John Nicks who is world a renown coach, Olympic Champion and American favorite Dorothy Hamill and Mark Lund who's only real claim to fame is an international skating magazine that went under. We are then informed that the object for the contestants is to produce the most entertaining program. In addition, they are required to put certain technical elements into their program. These elements will increase in difficulty as the weeks go on. Tonight, the required element is a spin of at least three revolutions. This spin can be a done by the contestants solely (side-by-side) or together (as a pair). Each week the contestants are given a musical theme. Tonight's theme is the movies.
Our first contestants of the night are Kurt Browning and Deborah Gibson. Before we see the actual performance, they show us clips of the practice sessions. This is to let us know how bad the celebrities are so we don't expect spectacular skating. In this case, Kurt tells us how concerned he is because, for one, he is a single skater and can't skate pairs. I happen to know Kurt has performed in a lot of skating shows and there is usually, at least, an opening and closing number where the cast performs together. He may not have done actual pair skating, but he knows perfectly well how to synchronize himself with another skater(s) and make it look good. Kurt tells us that basically due to Deborah's lack of skating skills, they are going to rely on her Broadway background for the number.
He is dressed in black pants and vest and white shirt with a top hat. She is wearing a black and white Lucille Ball style dress. They dance around each other and Kurt does a beautiful double axel. They then do lunges and, Kurt, in trying to transition to Deborah's other side, stepped on her. The number continued with Kurt basically pushing Deborah around the ice and guiding her through the moves. There were a couple of little lifts. They did execute their required pair spin; Kurt performed his first and then Deborah. Scott spoke with them after the number and Deborah said she was happy it went so well after only one month. Scott turns to the judges for their commentary. Dorothy said it was very entertaining. John Nicks said it was exciting and had a lot of energy but had too much fluff. Having heard John speak, I know he has a dry sense of humor and can be a bit sarcastic, so I thought they were playing on this. However, as the audience was booing, I knew they were making Sir John the Simon Cowell of this show. Mark Lund's comment was "nice spin". Scott sends the couple to the "Kiss and Cry" area to sit with Summer and receive their scores. Summer tells us there are two scores, one technical and one artistic and the scale is 1-10. The technical and artistic scores are added together for the final score. John gives the couple an 7.8 for technical and 8.0 for artistic. Dorothy gives them 8.0 and 8.2 and Mark gives them 8.0 for each. Their total score is 48.00 out of a possible 60. This doesn't look good for them. However, Deborah says she is glad they went first and now "has the bug". Hmmm, we'll see. I think she needs practice more than a bug.
The next contestants.....
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