The Holiday on Ice troupe will be stopping in Nice for two days on April 4th and 5th. A performance took place on Tuesday evening. Three more are scheduled for today at the Nikaรฏa Palace at 2 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and 9 p.m.
The venue in Nice has been transformed into an ice rink, and since Monday, the 50 skaters from Holiday on Ice have been practicing. “We need to get used to the ice rink. No two are alike. They differ in size and we have to find our bearings,” shares Lucien Esparbรจs, one of the few French skaters in the troupe.
The new Holiday on Ice production is called Romanza. It reinterprets mythical passions such as Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, Romeo and Juliet, and even Barbie and Ken. “I really like this theme. It’s very theatrical. Thanks to that, we are able to communicate very well with the audience,” explains Cรฉline Buera, who has been part of the troupe for 10 years and has experienced five different themes.
Six hours before the first performance in Nice, all the skaters put on their skates and, dressed “casually,” “in town as on the ice,” they rehearse. The choreographer fine-tunes the last details. Lucien and Cรฉline are attentive, as is Juliette, another French skater in the cosmopolitan troupe: “Holiday On Ice is so renowned that we can’t afford to make mistakes. Especially since we are not alone on the ice and a mistake or a fall affects the whole show. Everything must be perfect so as not to disappoint either the skaters or the audience.”
The training takes place in a good mood. They work on the different scenes. They coordinate all the movements, all the steps. About twenty skaters on the 27-meter-long ice rink unfold in a ballet. Each element of it crosses its course in perfect synchronization. Only the costumes and makeup are missing to make it feel like a real performance. But we can imagine. The hall is empty. Only privileged technicians attend the rehearsals but they too are preparing. Nothing is left to chance.
So goes Holiday on Ice. It’s 170 sessions in the hexagon over a year in 30 different cities. The troupe was in Marseille last weekend, will be in Montpellier next weekend, and is thus making a midweek stop in the capital of the Cรดte d’Azur.
