Ice remains ice. With current refrigeration technology it is seven centimeters, applied in every hall within 48 hours. But the question on “Holiday On Ice” for 80 years has been what to do with the ice. Better: What do you do on the ice? The story that the figure skaters tell while doing pirouettes, giant tops, lifting maneuvers and artistic jumps is not even that important. This time the story is only outlined in the program description as a “captivating hero’s journey” and “finding love”.
Anyone who takes the trouble (and thus takes away the surprise) and researches social media will find a few image snippets in the costumes and set design for the 80th edition of “No Limits”: a chess game with people Giant Pacman, futuristic things with fire throwers, flying gladiators, cotton candy sellers on the holiday beach, cowboys in the Wild West – a bit like zapping your way through the “Bully Parade”.
“It’s going to be a party,” says singer Vanessa Mai, explaining the whole concept of celebrating the milestone birthday of the show that likes to adorn itself with its world records. Apart from the “longest kickline” and the largest ice skating wheel with 65 people, three best achievements each refer to the same thing, namely being the most visited (ice) live entertainment in the world, with currently 330 million guests on all continents.
And one of them was Vanessa Mai. As a little girl, the pop star says she was enchanted by the floating ice skaters in their beautiful costumes. The 31-year-old can’t remember anything else, but that shouldn’t speak against the US show. On the contrary, whenever an experience is very intense for her, it stays less in her memory and more in her heart. “Everything becomes a blur for me,” and that was also the case the first time she went to a concert. But actually admiring the ice revue awakened the show girl in her: “Since then I knew: dancing, singing, performing, that’s my world.” And she always wants to reinvent herself like “Holiday On Ice”.
Imaginative costumes and artistry on the ice – these are two ingredients of the most visited show in the world.
(Photo: Rico Ploeg)
Since the first slide in a hotel in Toledo in 1942, the recipe for success at HOI has always been gentle change: not scaring away regular customers, but always offering something new to talk about. And these were often stars. Also those in the audience like Elvis Presley (1958 in Frankfurt), Charly Chaplin or Princess Diana. Sometimes the costume designers were the stars, like Rudolph Moshammer and even Dior with a 30,000 franc dress for Marika Kilius. Because of course there were also celebrities on “Holiday On Ice” that the sports ice skating scene produced: from Denise Bielmann (who invented her own pirouette) to Rudi Cerne and Norbert Schramm (with his backflip, which he was not allowed to show in sports competitions) to Katarina Witt, Tanja Szewczenko and 2019 Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot with a variant of their touching Olympic victory freestyle.
Better “Holiday On Ice” than vacation on the ICE: Here the participants make quick progress.
(Photo: Holiday On Ice)
Vanessa Mai can’t keep up. She doesn’t want to, she says, and you won’t see her in the show wearing ice skates. The singer would have the best prerequisites, she has known how to move sportily and artistically since her youth: with her hip-hop dance troupe she won the German championship as a 15-year-old and took part in the World Championships in Las Vegas; in 2016 she came second “Let’s Dance”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/.”I love challenges and don’t usually act so stupid,” says the entertainment all-rounder, “but this was too risky for me. I I have a busy schedule next year, so it wouldn’t help if I broke both legs.”
So she stays in her comfort zone and sings her hits “Rainbow” and “I die for you” live in special (rather fiery) versions at a few selected dates on the tour (in Munich on January 4th). She really enjoyed her first performances: “I love immersing myself in this world of winter and ice skating,” she says, “I just like it when it glitters.” New career level: Ice Princess.
Holiday On Ice, “No Limits”Thurs. to Sun., Jan. 4th to 7th, show with Vanessa Mai Thu., Jan. 4th, 7 p.m., Munich, Olympiahalle