Concerts Opera Dance Theater Gigs Exhibits

In the Spotlight

The tabloids are having a good time with "Dances on Ice." Zhizn reported that pop star Sergei Lazarev was in agony after doing the splits.

By Anna Malpas
Published: August 25, 2006

After a Russian version of the British show "Strictly Come Dancing" proved a hit with its formula of famous people learning to dance, television bosses took an imaginative leap and commissioned shows in which famous people learned to figure skate.

Unfortunately, two different channels had the same idea. The result is that Rossia began broadcasting a show called "Dances on Ice" last Sunday, while Channel One is due to launch "Stars on Ice" on Sept. 2.

It's an unfortunate situation that could perhaps only occur in Russia, where there are so many skating champions available as partners for celebrities that, quite possibly, no one was even double-booked.

The show on Channel One is going right to the top for its professional competitors: The channel's web site says that all five of Russia's gold medalists at the last Winter Olympics will take part, as well as Irina Slutskaya, who won bronze. So no pressure, then, for their celebrity partners, who will include pop singer Glyukoza and jazz musician Igor Butman.

The show now running on Rossia is a remake of Britain's "Dancing on Ice," which was something of a remake itself, having been inspired by the success of "Strictly Come Dancing." Rossia's show is hosted by actress Anastasia Zavorotnyuk, who does a lot of scripted repartee -- while showing a lot of cleavage for an ice-rink event -- and veteran host Yury Nikolayev, who is more the straight man.

In charge of training the celebrities are Olympic champions Natalya Bestemyanova and Andrei Bukin, while the professional skaters who get paired up with them include former world figure-skating champion Maria Butyrskaya. The jury has one non-professional judge: Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a top dancer at the Bolshoi.

The celebrity competitors vary in their level of fame. The most enduringly famous participant is probably Tatyana Dogileva, an actress who became well-known in the 1980s and recently starred in a sitcom called "Lyuba, Children, Factory." Others include singer and actress Lada Dens, rocker Sergei Galanin and actor Pyotr Krasilov, who played the boss' sidekick in the smash-hit sitcom "Don't Be Born Beautiful."

The only pair to score a perfect 6.0 in the first episode was that of pop star Sergei Lazarev and obscure figure skater Anastasia Grebenkina, who skated for Armenia at the Turin Olympics -- although Krasilov's pair did an impressive turn to music from the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack. Since ice rinks aren't exactly rare in Russia, it was sometimes hard to believe the wobbling and falling-over montages shown before each number, but at least they looked more authentic than the scenes where the participants cooled down with the soft drink that sponsors the show.

Tabloids are having a good time with "Dances on Ice." The newspaper Zhizn has already run stories about the professional who refuses to work with her lazy celeb partner (Butyrskaya, who partners with the rocker Galanin) and the amusing sports injury (Lazarev was in agony after doing the splits, the paper reported).

Also in the news this week was the filming of yet another show about celebrities learning a new skill: this time, singing. Media reports say that star journalist Leonid Parfyonov, who was fired from NTV's current-affairs show "Namedni" in 2004, is making his television comeback by hosting a show on Channel One called "Two Stars," which features singers training celebrities to perform duets with them.

The new project -- which sounds similar to a show called "Celebrity Duets" created by Simon Cowell -- got off to a bad start when Parfyonov broke a bone in his foot by falling off the stage on the first day of filming, and the whole thing has been postponed for at least a month. At least he won't have to do any ice-skating.

Print this article

E-mail this article

Copyright © 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.