High School Icicle

By Steve Bornfeld

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Stand clear, post-adolescents -- a Lean, Mean, Tween Machine is about to steamroll Vegas. ...

(Whoa, whoa, hold on: Didn't we already write something like this? Sounds so familiar. Maybe not. Continue, please.)

Heed our advisory, parents: Refrain from reciting those three words that trigger screaming, squealing, screeching and shrieking from kids coast to coast: "High School Musical. ..."

(Wait, wait! We wrote exactly those words not long ago in this newspaper. For, what was it? Yes, "Disney's High School Musical On Stage!" Must be that deja vu thing. What else did we say?)

The Thing That Ate Pop Culture lands in town Wednesday in stage-show form (no, no, just change it to "ICE-show form") at Planet Hollywood (substitute the Orleans Arena).

Swap out some words and there it is: "Disney's High School Musical: The Ice Tour" at the Orleans Arena from Wednesday through Jan. 11. A mere seven months after "HSM: On Stage" blasted through town in June. Scarcely three months after October's big-screen "HSM" rocketed to box-office dominance, launched by twin "HSM" TV movies that sent ratings into orbit.

What's next? HSM: The Underwear? ... Right. Your kids are wearing it right now.

"Maybe 'High School Musical in Space,' or 'High School Musical: The Water Show' would be cool, too," says Chucky Klaplow, a dancer in the "HSM" films and choreographer of this ice-travaganza in which the hip high-schoolers trade boogie shoes for boogie blades. Whatever the footwear, Klaplow and his blade brigade found common ground. ... Or ice. "Between them teaching me how to skate and me teaching them how to dance, there was a mutual respect," he says about his international crew, skaters hailing from Russia, Canada, England, Sweden and the U.S., among other countries.

So the story is that -- do you really need a recap? Well, OK -- jock/stud Troy meets shy siren Gabriella. They share a love of warbling when Troy ought to be dribbling, then audition for the school musical and fracture the rigid school caste system (jocks vs. dweebs vs. theater geeks vs. et al.), unleashing social chaos among the peach-fuzz-and-padded-bra set. Life lessons ensue about being yourself, exploring all your talents, being nonjudgmental, you know the score.

Speaking of which, there's lots of music. Times two. The first film's plot is compressed into Act 1, the second film packed into Act 2, with all the mega-popular pop tunes -- albeit truncated -- wedged in between. "It's really two shows in one," Klaplow says. "We have shorter versions of the songs that are cut creatively so it doesn't feel like they're cut short, but the story keeps moving. And we have a bonus feature, with a song from the third movie."

For this icy incarnation, Klaplow confronted logistical challenges specific to his blade-dancing cast. "We wanted to take the movement from onscreen and make it travel the vast stage of ice, whereas on TV, it takes place in one spot," he says. "And we wanted to turn the choreography in three directions because the audience is all around. We also changed the footwork because some things you can do on the floor can't be done on the blade."

Dialogue and songs recorded on a track supply the story around the icy acrobatics, though a live-mic actress playing Kelsi, a pianist/composer at the school, is cast as narrator and emcee, driving the show forward. Though skaters' skills qualify as both sport and art, gliding, leaping and spinning through a dance number about basketball, in a show highlight, required even more of their well-honed athleticism.

"I'm an Australian, I grew up playing cricket and rugby, so learning basketball was an interesting feat in itself," says Brad Santer, who stars as Troy. "It was a sport I really hadn't had much contact with. I still practice backstage." Bouncing a ball on a backstage floor? Fine. Shooting and scoring on an icy rink?

"It really works, it's just that once the balls get wet, they really get slippery after a few dribbles on the ice," Klaplow says. "The skaters have to have a strong grasp. They would take their basketballs home with them to the hotel and practice dribbling, because getting skaters to play basketball is a totally different world for them. But we had drills before we even went into the choreography."

Beyond ice-dancing a B-ball game, skaters also had to shift their accustomed styles to accommodate the show's contemporary score. "Skaters are classically trained in movement, so doing hip-hop choreography was the hardest thing," Klaplow says. "But they're young and the steps are like what they do at parties."

So stand clear, post-adolescents and yadda-yadda TV movies, yadda-yadda feature film, yadda-yadda stage show, yadda-yadda ice show.

Don't forget to wear the yadda-yadda underwear.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.