The Next Ice Age.

MAY 27-JUNE 1, 1997

REVIEWED BY GEORGE JACKSON 

How many times must ice dancing prove itself as art? Despite successes for more than a century--from Jackson Haines through Sonja Henie to John Curry and beyond--the public and press still have to be convinced that skating can respond to music seriously and be shaped into meaningful choreography. The Next Ice Age puts across these points persuasively.

The company's two director-choreographers, Nathan Birch and Tim Murphy, complement each other. Birch has visions. They're on a grand scale, filled with romantic stress and longing, like their music: Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony (Reformation) for the new Moving On, and Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony (Pathetique) for Sisyphean Victory, revived from 1991. These pieces have sweep, even in a proscenium setting that doesn't require moving your head to follow the action, as in a rink. The rush of motion and mounting excitement in Birch's work make it easy to overlook some unfulfilled dramatic expectations and a few passages repeated too literally.

No loose ends or otherworldly intimations perturb Murphy's finely crafted, emotionally firm choreography. Bright Blue Skating (to Michael Torke's music) is about the fun that people have in skating, and April (to a Josef Suk score) spins guest artist Dorothy Hamill's strength into silken yarn.

The group's fourteen regular skaters are mostly young. They form a cohesive, energetic ensemble, although the men aren't as distinctive as those in early editions of the Next Ice Age. This showed especially in Curry's masterly On the Beautiful Blue Danube, in which the original 1990 cast--Curry with his amplitude and nobility, Birch the lyricist, the punchy and bounding Murphy, and Shaun McGill with his demonic drive--remained individuals even while skating in unison and sporting Mona Lisa smiles.