Creating An Ice Princess Behind Scenes At The Rink, Choreographers Go To Work Sculpting Gold-Medal Image

One goes to Disney World, the other gets on David Letterman. One skates in little-girl dresses, the other in baby blue velour.

Whether it’s Tara Lipinski or Michelle Kwan who is crowned the world’s new ice princess Friday night at the Nagano Winter Olympics - it appears to be a two-skater race at this point - more than the ability to jump and spin has gotten them to this threshold.

Each has a distinct, contrasting personality off the ice, and each has a public persona shaped and polished by a retinue of agents whose services are seen as necessary for teenagers about to become something more than mere sports champions.

But for figure skaters, the creation of an image isn’t just an ancillary function. It’s part of the competition itself.

Lipinski and Kwan are the biggest rivals in the Nagano Winter Olympics’ biggest event. Though only two years apart in age, they are a generation apart in their skating presence. One skates to music from cartoon movies, the other to piano concertos and orchestral works.

All this image-forming is the work of two women who live a half-hour’s drive apart in Toronto. Their job is to create Lipinski’s and Kwan’s short and long programs, choose the music, consult on the costumes and generally create what those in the sport call “the package.”

In Lipinski’s corner is Sandra Bezic, a former Canadian pair skater who turned a powerful but unpolished Californian into Napoleon for the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Brian Boitano’s gold medal performance, which showcased his artistic talent for the first time, made choreographers almost as important as coaches in figure skating and brought Bezic to Kristi Yamaguchi’s attention when it was time to prepare for the 1992 Albertville Games.

Working Kwan’s side of the rink is Lori Nichol, a Philadelphia native and former singles skater who married an ice show performer and moved to Canada. Kwan is her first major client, and Nichol distinguished herself two winters ago by presiding over Kwan’s emergence into skating womanhood with her “Salome” long program.

The Lipinski-Kwan rivalry may be coming to a competitive climax, but the friendlier choreographer faceoff between Bezic and Nichol may run for many years.

Bezic would seem to have the more difficult job in this particular contest. The figure skating establishment, which officially calls its most popular discipline “ladies figure skating,” is appalled by the image of its Summer Olympic counterpart, women’s gymnastics, in which only pre-pubescent girls are capable of performing the tricks.

That is the package Lipinski brings to skating, and she beats Kwan only when Kwan falls and is overpowered by Lipinski’s youthful jumping ability.

Unlike gymnastics, however, there are two marks awarded in figure skating - one for technical merit, evaluating maneuvers like jumps and spins; and one for artistry, which is based on how the programs are presented. That’s where the choreographer comes in, and that’s where Kwan enjoys a decided edge over Lipinski.

Not even Bezic can make Lipinski what she’s not. So Bezic’s strategy in creating programs hasn’t been to portray Lipinski as a woman, but to frame her girlishness in a way that doesn’t make the judges see balance beams and parallel bars.

“I don’t think I should be making an issue of age,” Bezic said. “It’s something I can’t do anything about. I wanted to capture her love of skating and her very pure Olympic ideal. We want to celebrate the joy of her skating.”

For example, in her short program Thursday, Lipinski will skate to music from the animated film “Anastasia,” and wear a laced-front, peasant-girl dress.

But this is figure skating, remember, so this particular peasant girl wears sequins.

In 1996, when Kwan was 15, Nichol faced the same problem Bezic does today. But she took a different approach. Nichol prepared a program to three classical composers’ interpretations of the Biblical story of Salome. Kwan liked the music, but she wasn’t familiar with the story of the young seductress. She also wasn’t used to wearing makeup.

But Nichol put Kwan on the ice in lipstick and eye shadow and created a story line for her to imagine during performances of a young girl coming of age. Kwan carried it off perfectly and won the world championship.

“I’m still having some problems with Michelle,” Nichol said last month at the U.S. national championships. “I’m always tugging her neckline down, and she’s always trying to keep it up. So is her father.”

Still, the clingy blue number Kwan wore in Philadelphia while skating her long program to “Lyra Angelica,” William Alwyn’s concerto for harp and strings, drew the contrast between Kwan and Lipinski that Kwan’s coach Frank Carroll wanted to emphasize.

As Carroll bluntly put it: “She’s got boobs.”

Lipinski is making progress toward the image that both judges and public demand of the figure skater who wears the Olympic crown. Much of that comes from confidence gained as national and world champion in 1997.

“Tara is leading the process,” Bezic said. “She is very opinionated. She skates as a champion now. She holds herself with confidence. Last year her versatility with steps was far more limited. Her footwork, her choreographic vocabulary, has really increased. She concentrates on the details now: where her fingers are, whether her toe is turned out, the finer points.”

Nichols and Bezic’s work is done. Beginning Wednesday, the skaters will sell their carefully-crafted images to a worldwide audience.