Boitano, Witt Team Up For `Street Look' Ice Show'

PORTLAND, Maine - Figure skaters Katarina Witt and Brian Boitano feel there's a special chemistry in the ease with which they perform together on the ice.

Boitano said the former Olympic gold medalists anticipate each other's movements and share similar feelings about how the partner's role fits in with his or her own.

``The way we conceive of each part is the same,'' said Boitano, who has been rehearsing with Witt for their upcoming 34-city tour.

``So if I say, `I really feel like I'm doing this,'' she'll go, `I feel the same way.' And when I look at her I can see that she feels the same way.''

``In some ways, we are the same,'' Witt said. ``We always want to be good, to be perfect. We put a lot of heart into the skating.''

The show marks the first time the two have skated together before a live audience.

The event, ``Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt Skating,'' opens here today and will continue through June 12, ending in Philadelphia.

The show will stop at the Tacoma Dome May 12. A tour of Europe and Japan is scheduled in the fall.

Boitano said the show, which also features a dozen other Olympic and world-champion skaters - one is Rosalynn Sumners, who finished second to Witt in the 1984 Olympics - has ``a street look'' and is a far cry from the glitzy Las Vegas-style extravaganzas that many people associate with ice shows.

``It's new. It's a contemporary ice show. It's what's happening now,'' he said.

In their first rehearsal, Boitano, Witt and choreographers Sandra Bezic and Michael Siebert worked on ``Isolation Hotel,'' a number in which the two skaters portray lovers who seek emotional therapy for their bumpy relationship.

Each is locked in a hotel room, unaware that the other is in the room next door. Skating to the haunting ballad, their movements reflect how their thoughts are focused exclusively on each other.

``I think that's probably our favorite piece,'' Boitano said.

The music for the show runs from Top 40 to classical to Broadway; the various production numbers, pairs and solo performances are conceived as a unit with interconnecting themes.

``Isolation Hotel,'' for example, is part of the ``Sister Moon'' segment, linked by the theme that the moon makes people do crazy things, Boitano explained.

The skaters, who won gold medals in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, said the challenge in performing at ice shows is different from that of international competition.

``There's still a lot of pressure because you want to be good and you want to show the audience that you're still a good skater,'' said Witt, who also won the gold at Sarajevo in 1984. ``But you have 34 shows and if you make a little mistake, you still have the next evening. But in competition, if you make a little mistake, everything you're worked for all year is over.''

The show represents the third collaboration of Witt and Boitano: In 1988, they appeared in an ABC-TV prime-time special, ``Brian Boitano: Canvas of Ice.''

A full-length film, ``Carmen on Ice,'' based on the Bizet opera, has been released in Europe and a segment of it will be featured in Boitano and Witt's new show.

Witt said the toppling of the Berlin Wall and the democratic changes in her country have created new freedoms and opportunities for her and other East Germans.

``I can do now whatever I want,'' she said. ``I do not have to ask somebody, `Please, can I do this?' I do not have to beg somebody to get out of the country and to work with Brian.''