Magic on ice casts holiday spell

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The holiday season came early to Jakarta last week with Hollywood, which transformed the glamor and grandeur of Tinseltown into an icecapade of sound, lights and action.

Presented by Mata Seni and D Production, Hollywood took the audience on a tour of the defining decades of the "Dream Factory", from silent films to sci-fi.

Harnessing the celebrated talents of Creative Director Anthony van Laast, a producer of Broadway musicals who also collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Co-producer/Choreographer Robin Cousins, a figure skating Gold medalist of the 1980 Winter Olympics, the spectacular featured an international cast of champion individual and pairs skaters, along with an ensemble of 35 professional skaters.

Walking into the stands of Bung Karno stadium at Istora Senayan, Central Jakarta, for the Sunday matinee show, the rectangular stage of ice looked slightly out of place on the basketball court, surrounded by floor lights with only the logo of sponsors Hewlett-Packard and TransTV skating across its surface. Designed to resemble a film studio, cinematic props and wooden crates stood motionless as the stadium filled to half- capacity, mostly with Indonesian families, dotted here and there with expatriate and mixed-marriage families -- all with children in tow -- but also couples.

The public announcement system came to life -- and read out the license plate number of a metallic green Kijang, requesting its owner to "please come out to your car". Just before show time, it repeated the message, adding a minor detail: "You have forgotten to lock your car. Please come out to the parking lot. Thank you." A ripple of titters and turning heads followed.

All of a sudden, the house lights go down: "Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome ... to Holiday on Ice!" and cheers echo through the stadium.

As the speakers burst forth with music that sounded uncannily like the 20th Century Fox theme, the studio doors opened and film crews emerged in a flurry of activity. Wardrobe and prop crew, gaffers, soundmen, cameramen and a director -- armed with a megaphone and his director's chair -- all glided to their positions, and Hollywood came alive before the audience's eyes.

An audition scene warmed expectations, with the Director exasperated by the low caliber of acts.

Before the laughter could ebb, the stadium boomed with the James Bond theme -- and Agent 007 Ryan McKinnon skated out, suave in a white tuxedo and impeccable style. Enter Bond girl Laetitia Bajot, gracefully weaving a duet with Bond, then femme fatale Melanie Lambert, a spinning tour de force in a white catsuit.

The Bond girl is kidnapped, and 007 storms the baddies' hideout, skating up ramps, leaping over crates and the girl bound to a chair, even jumping through a ring of fire to rescue the girl -- it's action on ice.

But there's more -- Bond's captured and locked into a crate, which is hoisted about five meters above the ice. In a flash of smoke, the crate's panels swing open, the crowd gasps -- where's Bond? He skates back onto the ice, kissing the hands of several female audience members as he goes, when an Aston Martin convertible with three more Bond girls rolls onstage.

After a sequence of alternating duets, Bajot reentered to Nobody Does it Better, effortlessly executing lifts with McKinnon, then exiting. A single spotlight shone on McKinnon as he began his exit, then he delivered that trademark twist and aim.

The audience applauded and cheered him off -- and that was just the opening main act, "The Action Movie".

Act One also included "The Love Story", set to Titanic, using a steel scaffold creatively to evoke a stern and the famous flying scene. Polish figure skater Radek Dostal and Czech Magdalena Komorowska as Jack and Rose turned the ice into an ocean with their fluid duet to My Heart Will Go On -- which prompted immediate applause -- their performance making Jack's exit all the more heartrending.

Of particular note were Hungarian acrobat Karoly Gaspar and doubles skater Oliver Pekar, the clowns of the show, who appeared intermittently to deliver a classic, little guy-big guy comic act. "The Audition" also featured the director character, and invited active audience participation in response to the duo's starry-eyed aspirations and antics.

Meanwhile, the ensemble skaters provided a chorus line in "The Historic", donning costumes that look like A Midsummer Night's Dream meets Spartacus and Xena, and in "Pop Culture", a tribute to 1980s dance classics such as Fame, Flash Dance, Dirty Dancing and Footloose -- with a bit of hip-hop in skates.

French skater Maxime Duchemin demonstrated the agility and technique of a top figure skater, landing two triple axels and attempting a quadruple to She's Like the Wind -- and actually landed a quadruple axel in Act Two as Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Called Desire.

Principal skater Craig Heath gave new meaning to "footloose", covering the ice in flips, leaps and jumps, and delivering an all-time favorite, a sit spin, ascending and accelerating into a whirling blur.

Intermission was marked by a mini-zamboni that smoothed the surface quickly and efficiently, unwittingly providing a soothing attraction.

Act Two focused on the heyday of early 20th century Hollywood, and the stage opened to a winter wonderland, complete with synthetic snow, a golden sleigh shaped like a swan and skaters in "brocade" costumes of royal hues. "The Epic" featured Russian pairs skaters Alexander Svechnikov and Natalia Voulf, the love theme of Dr. Zhivago complementing their graceful duet of seamless synchronization.

"Icons" paid tribute to the grand stars of Tinseltown, such as Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and Audrey Hepburn, with a cameo turn by all-American icon Elvis Presley.

Charlie Chaplin then stole the scene in "Silent Movie", with McKinnon appearing this time as baddie Dick Dastardly, giving the Keystone Cops the runaround.

In the reenactment of the popular train scene, when Dastardly ties up The Girl to the tracks ahead of an approaching steam train, McKinnon outdid his earlier performance as 007. As the cops gave chase, they laid down on the ice with knees and elbows -- and head -- tucked in, and McKinnon leapt over one, then another in succession. Then they lined up, and he leapt over one, then two together, then three in a row, and to crown it all, he jumped over not four, but six cops in a row -- kids, do not try this at the Mal Taman Anggrek rink.

"Hollywood Glamour" presented the advent of Technicolor, and the ice lit up with ensemble skaters twirling in flowing red strapless gowns, head scarves and long gloves to the spontaneous applause of the audience. It was all dreamy elegance as male skaters in full tuxedos spun their partners upon their arms, as if upon a cloud.

Departing from the innocence of these early periods, it was time for the Moulin Rouge courtesans to raise the tempo to the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's acclaimed production. Stripping off their neon petticoats to reveal bloomers, the 30-strong ensemble rocked the house in the can-can, skating downstage in single file, kicking up their knees.

The audience broke out into raucous approval in the final scene, in which two male skaters linked arms, facing each other and rotating slowly in center stage. Two by two, the other ensemble members skated out to link to their fellows at opposite ends, with the last two or three skaters sprinting to catch hold of the spinning, single line.

The final act, "Fantasy", began with the Gaspar-Pekar duo, who had finally been cast by the director. The duo got serious to the theme of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and brought the Big Top to the ice in feats like the Spanish statue and a spinning "T" -- Gaspar forming the top of the "T".

Their crowning move had Pekar suspended upside-down by one leg a few meters above the ice, and Gaspar suspended from Pekar in a loop and spinning -- by his head, using his legs as a weight to generate momentum. The audience was hushed to silence, then clapped and whistled in a frenzy as the duo alit back on the ice and took their bows.

The male ensemble skaters then returned to the ice to the theme of Star Wars Episode I: Attack of the Clones, dressed as robots or space walkers in helmets and suits that lit up, eliciting "oohs" and "aahs" from the stands. The women skaters followed in feathered helmets and steel wings folded against their backs like futuristic, winged goddesses -- and a collective gasp of delight arose when they opened their wings, lights bubbling toward their wind-tips.

As the bars to the Superman theme washed over the ice, the principal skaters entered, taking bows in turn. On the final, rising refrain, fireworks shot forth and rained down upon the full cast, and the stadium erupted in applause, whistles and hoots.

It was over, but the excitement and joy lingered among the crowd of bright-eyed children -- and adults. Hollywood had just showered magic dust over us all.

The emcee's voice cast the final spell: "We hope to see you next year."