BWW Interviews: Mercer, Sharutenko & Penkine From CINDERELLA ON ICE

Ollie meets with Tony Mercer, the Artistic Director of Cinderella on Ice, and two of its stars, Olga Sharutenko, who plays Cinderella and Andrei Penkine, Prince Charming, as it prepares to open at the Royal Albert Hall later this month.

Hi, Andrei, Olga and Tony, and welcome to BWW:UK. First up, how did you all come to be involved in this project?

Andrei: I was a professional figure skater; I started learning when I was three years old. When I hit 19 I thought it would be nice to move into the performance side. I met Tony 12 years ago when he came to my home city of St. Petersburg and I joined the company he was working for.

Olga: I met Tony 10 years ago and joined up with him them. Before that I was a professional figure skater too. Although I started quite late, I was six.

Really, six is late?

Olga: Yes, in sport in Russia you start very young; if you are trying to become a professional you have to start very early. Parents bring their children as soon as they can. Children don't have so much fear so it's easier for them to learn the difficult movements.

Andrei: And they're shorter, so it's not so far to fall.

So you've all been together a long time?

Andrei: Yes, I've been with Tony for 12 years altogether and six years with this company.

Tony: When we met and obviously I saw them both a long time ago, I was working for another company but we were all very likeminded and had similar views. We all wanted to achieve more to find another way to take ice dance or ice skating and eventually in 2003-2004 we got together. The ideas we wanted to see come together on ice started to happen and we formed our own group the Imperial Ice Stars.

This is a very big project, isn't it?

Tony: Well, yes, it is but when you're inside of it you don't realise just how big. We've been touring now for six years and our first production which was Sleeping Beauty went to 12 countries and the following show, Swan Lake, visited 15 countries and now Cinderella is visiting 16 countries and by that time millions of people have seen your performances. It's hard to actually get an idea of just how big it is.

Did you always want to bring a show to the Royal Albert Hall?

Tony: Bringing a show to the Royal Albert Hall is the culmination of a four-year plan. We created ourselves in 2004 and I thought we should be taking ourselves to the biggest dance stages in the world and of course we were lucky enough to be invited to perform at Sadler's Wells in 2005 but we realised very quickly that by doing that you begin to be compared with ballet. I'm not sure why that is, possibly something to do with the similarity of body movement. It's a shame in a way that whenever we go on stage people make the comparison and it doesn't quite fit. The result was, we had to think about taking ourselves to an even bigger stage, a bigger world venue, in the hope that the comparison doesn't come. Well, they don't come much bigger than the Royal Albert Hall.

How do you feel about performing in such a world renowned venue?

Olga: Amazing, nervous, the usual feelings and very proud. Proud of the whole team. It's a challenge from many different angles, certainly as a performer. We couldn't have ever dreamt of performing there but we have grown as a company and there has always been a challenge to bring what we're doing to great venues like this. We've been in a lot of competitions, we're great figure skaters but this is something else, this lets us be performers and achieve great things, it's an absolutely amazing feeling.

Tony: It's certainly amazing to have achieved it in such a short period of time. Especially when you consider the way that figure skating was looked at. As a sport it is losing its popularity and underneath that there is our company coming through who have a desire to express what figure skating could be. The reality of what we're doing is everything is on a blade and that's a different way of expressing yourself and to have come so far in only six years is great.

Where do you go next?

Tony: America have now started to look at us and we will probably end up touring American towards the end of 2011 and through into 2012.

What's the scene like out there?

Tony: It's funny as Russia is the home of figure skating but America also considers themselves to be a very well-educated figure-skating country and they have had some great champions but that of course has fallen away and there are people out there trying to do what we do and it hasn't worked. But recently we've come onto their radar and there are some produces who are seriously interested in taking us out there and certainly performing at the Royal Albert Hall has pricked their ears up.

What's the most exciting part of the process of putting together a show like this?

Tony: To do something different. To show what we do with blades on a stage can be combined with theatricality, with character presentation and to see that come to life. But also that the people who I work with believe in the ideas I have and even if they look at me in a strange way because I'm not an ice skater and I say "try this" or "try that" and they reply with "that's never going to work" but to actually see it work and people enjoy themselves and be very comfortable on the ice is brilliant.

Olga: The most interesting thing for me is to just be involved. Going through the whole process from the very conception of the show and the ability to create a character which will inspire people when they watch you. We express ourselves through movement and when we talk to people who watch us we understand that they are really inspired and that inspires me to keep working hard and to always keep doing more. We're always creatively involved and working to create something for the show, it stops being your job and becomes a hobby, your life, you live on stage, you live inside a theatre.

Andrei: I don't think I can add anything, I agree with everything that's been said.

So you wanted to take figure skating in a new direction?

Tony: I always had this idea that ice dance was never meant to be a competition, it's not a competition thing. It just happened to evolve into being an Olympic sport when it shouldn't be, it's artistic. It's a dance and that's where it should be. Torvill and Dean took it in that direction and I always thought after them figure skating would go towards ice dance but unfortunately rules and regulations stopped that. Artistry was destroyed and it became all about the jump and the spin and how many marks you get for doing a certain thing which is not the way figure skating should be, it completely sanitised the beauty of it. Fine let it be a competition, let it be markable but that's not it's true home. It belongs on a stage not in a big ice arena where emotion and expression can be lost racing around at 100mph.

Olga: Thanks to Tony, when he created his company and asked us to work with him he allowed us to create something together with all the people around us. Not just the skaters but the technicians and costume designers and set designers, we're all working together to create the show and then when we're on tour we're all still working together.

Tony: It's not about the jump, of course it's important but too much is focused on that. There was no expression or emotiveness in what was done before. Olga and Andrei are naturally good at it, they're comfortable on the ice.

Have you found it difficult to combine that technical skill with an emotive element?

Andrei: When you've been doing it since you were three that's absolutely fine. You just skate, you don't think about it.

Tony: That's the point, it's what is naturally inside them, I just channelled their skills into a character and a performance.

Olga: There are 25 of us on stage and you channel the talent into the skills of the performers and together we create the whole show.

Tony: It fires up the imagination for creativity and when I've gone they will both make great directors and choreographers.

Are you ready to retire already?

Tony: It's always been a 10-year journey and I'm amazed we got here in six. It's wonderful but there is still a long way to go. It's an organic process, we're bringing skating to a new environment and we are still discovering all the things we want to achieve.

And is your desire to inspire some young ice skaters?

Olga: It's always good to hear when people come up to you and say they saw you two years ago and now they've taken up figure skating lessons or they go every week to a public session because they fell in love with skating. As a sport it doesn't have that relaxing side and because of the rules you have to follow and the pressure of performing in front of the judges there is never that joy of performing. You have to enjoy what you do, it is hard work sometimes but when you perform it is brilliant.

Tony: What's also interesting is that ice dancing is seen as a very girl-orientated activity but through Andrei's performance and his style he is responsible for inspiring boys to take up the sport.

What was the idea behind Cinderella?

Tony: We wanted to challenge the preconceived impressions of what Cinderella is, avoiding the attachment to pantomime and the ballet version. It's surprising how many people think it's a fairy tale based around the Disney film. Our version of Cinderella is taking it right back to the idea of what a Cinderella is, looking at the story from its roots in Roman times and Ancient China, the idea of somebody who was suffered adversity or who has been put down but continues to strive forward. Cinderella had a lot of bad luck, her mum died and her dad remarried and her new step-family aren't very nice to her but she still wanted to achieve something. In our version the step mother is actually a ballet mistress who is determined not to let Cinderella become the star.

Have you had personal Cinderella stories?

Olga: Referring to myself, I think being inside the sport of figure skating things did not always happen in the way you wished them to. The sport life was a tough one and being in the Russian team where so many talented skaters are trying to get to the top was a difficult environment and it's not always fair and you don't get the place you want. When you are training you always believe that you can show that you are the best and they will give you the marks you deserve but that isn't always the case and that's what happened with my sport life and that's why I decided to stop. I was continually pushed back and pushed away but then I found theatre on ice and found a way in life to still be a figure skater and enjoy what I do and I think that is my Cinderella story.

It must be very enjoyable to perform in front of an audience that connects with what you do and enjoys it rather than clinical judges?

Olga: Exactly, every competition has a huge audience in a big ice arena with thousands of people around you screaming and shouting who are there to support you but the thing is you never perform for them. You can hear them as you go to the ice but you only perform for the judges, they're the only people who will place you and can allow you to win the medal. You never perform for the people who came to support you and watch you skate. That's the huge difference with theatre where they come to watch you and you perform for them, they're enjoying your emotions and they feed them back to you, it's a magical feeling.

Cinderella on Ice plays at the Royal Albert Hall from 24 February to 28 February. For more information please see: http://www.royalalberthall.com or http://www.imperialicestars.com.

 

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