Dancing On Ice - At The Paramount

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"Myriad," by the Seattle Ice Theatre, opens tomorrow at 8 p.m. and plays Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St., Seattle. $21-$100. 206-292-ARTS. -------------------------------

The Paramount Theatre has entered the ice age.

This week, most of the regular seats were removed from the historic downtown showplace. And thanks to the wonders of coolant technology, an enormous swatch of the theater's main floor was turned into a gleaming expanse of 2-inch-thick ice.

The transformation has occurred just in time for "Myriad," an evening-long program of expressive skating numbers performed by the fledgling Seattle Ice Theatre.

The Paramount's three-performance run of "Myriad" this weekend is an experiment in several respects.

First, the show will turn the Paramount into a 760-seat ice arena for the first time in the landmark venue's 70-year history.

The event will be a test case to see whether local skating aficionados will turn out for a high-priced blade show without the flash and big names of the annual Stars on Ice blowouts at KeyArena.

In addition, "Myriad" is an impassioned attempt by Rebecca Safai and Bernard A. Ford, the two coaches and ex-pro skaters who are the production's choreographers and directors, to steer skating away from athletic competition and celebrity razzle-dazzle to more purely artistic realms.

"This is not your usual ice show," asserts Safai, a veteran of commercial skating shows and a former U.S. Figure Skating Association gold medalist.

"There are so many really talented skaters out there, and yet skating has just barely been developed as an art form," she emphasizes. "We want to try out a lot of things in a noncommercial cultural setting, where we can take more artistic risks."

"Myriad" features five eclectic numbers in ballet, jazz and modern dance modes, with dramatic lighting and music from such diverse sources as minimalist composer John Adams, and the Seattle rock group Sky Cries Mary. You may spot a few triple lutzes on the program, but multiple stunt jumps are not what Seattle Ice Theatre prizes most.

The dance-oriented choreography will be performed by 18 polished young skaters from around the country and Canada, including two current Ford proteges, national Novice Ice Dance champions Kakani and Ikaika Young.

"It's a big commitment for all these kids to come here and give up three weeks of their time to rehearse and perform," says Ford, who resides in Seattle but travels the world with the aspiring young ice dancers he coaches.

The Paramount/Seattle Theatre Group also has made a major commitment to "Myriad." David Allen, the Paramount's director of operations, is overseeing all the technical aspects of the show, including installation of the 60-by-90-foot ice rink by the Los Tres PapaGayos portable ice company of Van Nuys, Calif.

And Paramount producer Josh LaBelle says his organization is committing $47,000 to the production, plus a considerable amount of donated staff time, space rental and technical equipment.

"Our interest is in helping to present an ice-skating event in a new theatrical light, instead of as a children's or sporting event," LaBelle explains. "I think Seattle skating fans are hungry for that. We've had only a little publicity, but we've sold about 30 percent of the tickets so far."

The Seattle Ice Theatre was formed in 1995 as an outgrowth of Safai's personal disillusionment with the grind of competitive and professional skating.

"Like a lot of skaters, I was never a great competitor," admits the Magnolia resident and mother of two toddlers. "I always was better at the artistic side. I think we lose some of our very best skaters because they don't have the psychological makeup to tough out the contests. And they don't want to wind up being Goofy in the Disney shows."

Ford was much better at gritting out the competitive showdowns. During his years skating for Britain in the 1960s, he won four gold medals in the World Ice Dance Championships and was made a Member of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

But Ford, too, is concerned about the lack of creative opportunities in the field. "There's nothing better in skating than the sheer joy of finessing an edge," he says. "With all this emphasis on jumps in competitions, you don't get many chances to see that beauty. Judges think that jumping is the hard thing, but it's sustaining those edges that is the most difficult and rewarding."

A few high-level attempts already have been made to spotlight the more aesthetic and elegant nature of skating, in a dramatic format.

A pioneer in that endeavor was a Birmingham, England, contemporary and childhood neighbor of Ford's, Olympic gold medalist John Curry. Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1987, Curry created the landmark Broadway show, "Ice Dancing," and formed his own troupe, John Curry Skating Company, with choreography by modern dance great Twyla Tharp and others.

The brilliant Olympian team of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean also assembled and toured an unusually imaginative ice show for a time.

But along with lesser known ice-skating troupes in New York and Vancouver, B.C., Seattle Ice Theatre was created to galvanize a local skating community. The task began with more modestly scaled performances at Seattle area rinks.

"I moved here in order to help make Seattle more of a skating center, a place where the really talented young people would train," says Ford. He admits that's been a slow process. And he's so busy elsewhere coaching American and Japanese skaters, there's been limited time to tutor local hopefuls at his resident rink, the Sno-King in Lynnwood.

Safai, however, is concentrating most on the Seattle Ice Theatre and her pupils at Shoreline's Highland Ice Arena.

She dreams of her company performing annually in big venues like the Paramount, and working with top choreographers who have not yet applied their genius to the ice.

At the top of her wish list is "having Mark Morris do something with us. Wouldn't that be great?"