figure skating podcast interview
figure skating podcast interview
MARCH 2013
Part Two of an interview with Audrey Weisiger, Olympic-level coach (most notably of Michael Weiss and Tim Goebel), and creator of both Grassroots to Champions (G2C) and the Young Artists Showcase (YAS). In Part Two we discuss her collaboration with the late choreographer Brian Wright, the creation of G2C and YAS, her thoughts on how to get the dwindling American fan base back into skating, and her ideas on how to evolve the sport. 57 minutes, 31 seconds.
Thanks to Fiona Mcquarrie for transcribing these interview highlights:
On working with choreographer Brian Wright: I was drawn to Brian’s work without ever having met him. He was already developing great artists in his own world, but I just hadn’t ever been exposed to it. We actually finally got to hang out together at an Olympic training seminar in Colorado Springs, and there was this instant connection and instant bond. We saw skating the same way, it was about the performance, not just did you land this or did you win. Plus he was just an amazing human being to be around. He was larger than life. He would walk in a room and everyone would instantly be drawn to him. And he could change the mood or clarity of a room just by his presence.
He had a lot of insight. He was terminally ill from the day I met him, and he lived his life every day as if it was going to be the last one. He never held back. He would have kids over to his apartment in Indianapolis, and he would show them movies — not skating movies, but important ones that he wanted them to learn from. He showed them Cinema Paradiso, The Sound of Music — it sounds kind of funny but that was his favorite movie — and all kinds of indie films. He created a generation of artists in US skating and a body of work that a lot of choreographers now look to. I use a lot of his artistic development and philosophy in my own work with students. And he was a dancer, he danced with A Chorus Line in New York and with Pacific Northwest Ballet. I think he never wanted to be an ice skating choreographer [laughs], he used to say to me, I am an actor. Well, okay, Shakespeare, if you’re an actor then you better get out there. I think it’s funny when we say there’s one thing we want to be and we end up completely not doing. He would say, I want to have my own one-man show on Broadway, and I’d say, well, hurry up. He wrote and wrote and wrote, and I have some of his writings that one day I’d love to turn into some kind of a one-scene, one-man show in his honor.
Toward the end he was really falling apart, and that was a long time ago when AIDS treatment wasn’t really advanced, and they just fell off piece by piece. And he wouldn’t let me see him. He would talk to me on the phone, this was about two years before he died. And the week before he finally died, he called and left a message on my voicemail, and for some reason I kept it. It says I love you, I miss you, I mean it, bye. He died a week later. There’s a great tribute on YouTube that Craig Heath, one of Brian’s disciples, created for the memorial service. It was really interesting because Brian’s memorial service had so many facets of his life. I’d heard about some of his colleagues in Seattle, where he worked for the Pacific AIDS Foundation, we knew of each other but we’d never met. And we were all there at the memorial, and I could see how widespread his reach was to the community of man, so much more than skating.
I miss him, I think about him all the time. Once I was whining to Peter Oppegard, who was also really good friends with Brian, Peter, I feel like he’s gone and it’s not the same any more. And Peter goes, oh, he’s still there. You put an outfit on and you hear in the back of your head, sweetie, is that what you’re wearing? And I have to remind myself even though he’s not here, he’s always with me. And that’s where Young Artists Showcase came from.
On Grassroots to Champions: My mission was to co[...]
