Lilac City Figure Skating Club brings Vegas glamour to Ice-A-Delics show
The glitz and glamour of Las Vegas will come to Spokane when the Lilac City Figure Skating Club presents its biennial Ice-A-Delics show.
This year’s exhibition, “Mirage,” features international medalist and 2011 national champion Ryan Bradley and will be at Eagles Ice Arena on Friday and Saturday.
Coach Larissa Lowell, who competed for the club for 12 years, is directing and choreographing the show and came up with the idea of paying homage to the entertainment capital of the world.
“One of the things that I came up with was going through the Las Vegas strip and visiting each one of the hotels and all of the iconic artists that performed in each hotel there back in the day,” she said. “We go back to Frank Sinatra, and we have Madonna and Barry Manilow and even some newer ones like Britney Spears, who performed there.”
She has spent three months choreographing and creating storyboards, and the skaters, age 6 to early 60s, have been rehearsing the show for about a month.
“The hard stuff is already done,” Lowell said. “It’s easy to get it on the ice and teaching the kids how to do it.”
Skaters practice twice a week, with the intermediate through senior level skaters practicing both on and off ice.
Bradley has skated in Spokane at least twice before. He won over the audience when he skated past Johnny Weir to claim second place at the 2007 U.S. Figure Skating Championships at the Spokane Arena. He returned three years later as a fan favorite and skated to fourth place behind a powerhouse field of then defending champion Jeremy Abbott, reigning world champion Evan Lysacek, and three-time U.S. champion Weir.
The skaters will get a chance to practice with Bradley, who will perform two solos and in the introduction piece with the older skaters, during dress rehearsal.
“Hopefully that all goes nice and smooth and everybody will know where they’re going and what they’re doing,” Lowell said.
A staple of the Lilac City Figure Skating Club, Lowell said the Ice-A-Delics shows give skaters a chance to forget about competition and remember why they love skating in the first place.
“From when I was a skater performing in these shows as well, it was a fun way to bring all of us competitors together and show people why we enjoy skating so much and our skills and how much fun it is to be out there and why we love it,” she said.