Don’t get me wrong. The wedding itself was lovely and long anticipated. Billy was already 40 and our family often joked that he wouldn’t get married till hell froze over. Well, hell may have been the only thing left unchanged after that weekend. Because just before Hurricane Bob creamed us and knocked out all contact with the outside world, we heard that Boris Yeltsin had made his Kremlin stand and Soviet communism was crumbling.
We had a lot of time, stranded by the storm on Cape Cod, to absorb the stunning news and to contemplate all the ramifications. I don’t remember many of our sage conclusions, except for the obvious and, in light of recent history, foolish notion that the world would be a much safer place. One thing I know for certain about our whisky-tinged discourse: We didn’t give a moment’s thought to the implications for the Soviet Union’s figure-skating empire.
I was recalling all this as I watched the ice dancing competition at the recent Grand Prix of Figure Skating finals in Kitchener, Ontario. Ice dancing? Believe me. I can hear the derision, the laughter, the scorn. And to a certain extent, I share it. After all, ice dancing is far more show-biz than sport, giving rise to the ludicrous notion that ballroom dancing too deserves an Olympic stage. But for all its foolishness as sport, it can be enchanting to watch. And there has never been a more thrilling Olympic skating performance than Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s dazzling “Bolero”–with all its perfect 6.0 scores–at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics.
The most thrilling Olympic skate I ever witnessed personally was also in dance competition–the 1992 gold-medal performance of Russia’s Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko in Albertville. It was so intense, passionate and sexy that when the pair finished, there was at least five seconds of breathless silence before the audience erupted into a standing ovation. My photographer sidekick, Dave Black, and I had a nightly ritual of stopping for a beer after the competition. But that evening Dave begged off. “I think I’ll just go to bed and dream of my wife,” he said. (I confess I stopped for a solo beer anyway, but I definitely dreamed of my wife later.)
So by now you’re asking what does all this sentimental, dreamy crap have to do with the fall of the Soviet Union? Well actually, plenty. Because at that Grand Prix dance final, with the top six dance teams in the world, there wasn’t a single Russian pair in the competition. There were admittedly some Russian expats among the other national entries. But this is a discipline that the Russians, with their nation’s revered dance tradition, have pretty much owned throughout its competitive history. They have won every single Olympic gold medal, but for Torvill and Dean in Sarajevo, when the Russians had to settle for silver and bronze.
But in America we don’t care diddly about dance. And when the Soviet Union crumbled, so did its powerful sports authority. There was no one to force the Russian skaters into dance pairs (or for that matter any pairs). Instead, the Russian skaters began to mimic the Americans and pursue singles skating. And for one reason only: The money was in America and virtually all of it was in ladies’ and men’s. Even with the glut of figure skating on American TV, ice dancing is rarely shown and then strictly as filler while the Zamboni cleans the ice.
During the Soviet Union’s heyday, none of its figure skaters ever won an individual Olympic gold medal. But since its fall, the former Soviets have dominated, winning all three Olympic men’s competitions (Viktor Petrenko in Albertville, Alexei Urmanov in Lillehamer and Ilya Kulik in Nagano), as well as Oksana Baiul’s memorable triumph amid the Kerrigan-Harding soap opera in Lillehamer. And they are odds-on to take the men’s (with Evegeny Plushenko and Alexei Yagudin divvying up gold and silver) and perhaps the ladies’ as well (with Irina Slutskaya) next month in Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, the Russians have done a disappearing act in dance. The last two world titles have been won by French and Italian pairs. And at the Grand Prix last month, a Canadian couple beat them both, dancing cute to a Michael Jackson medley.
I’m going out on a limb here, but in the view of this cultural Peasant–and I may be in a minority in this–Michael Jackson is no Rachmaninoff. So while these winning performances, of late, have been entertaining enough and not unpleasant to watch, they have lacked the Russian passion and Bolshoi majesty that can make ice dancing a joy to witness. What that means to you is that, having probably never watched ice dancing in the first place, you don’t have to start now. What it means to me is that my buddy Dave and I won’t miss any beer nights at the Winter Games again. And as for our dreams, well I guess we’re on our own now.
