Genius on duty (Gary Beacom)

[pETEs (Sasha Fan)]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hcQWCca5i8

 

[Spun Silver]

Totally agree. Love, love, love him! What a brilliant dancer and avant-garde imagination!

I would be very interested if people could point me to, or help compile, a list of some of the programs he's created as a choreographer. I'm curious whether he's been able to get other skaters to realize his vision the way Christopher Dean, for example, has.

 

[Skate Talker]

Imho, I don't think any other skater past or present could do what Gary did, though he did skate duets with Gia Guiddat for a while mostly in Sun Valley. Here is a sample -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OznyoOS0_aE

I recall also that he customized his skates extensively to perfect his moves - things like shaving off the sides of the soles so he could get more extreme angles on the blades without "bottoming out" shall we say. The leather looks to be very flexible and wouldn't provide much ankle support. If you watch this program it also looks like he may have filed off the toe-picks. He certainly never needs to use them to stop and iirc only put his version of edge jumps into his professional programs -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iJLlBn8-pE

I don't really see anyone else duplicating his techniques, unless they come from something like a cirque de soliel background. He might be a natural at choreographing for them if it interested him.

 

[nimi]

He choreographed this program.

On the topic of customizing his skates:

He can work the blade himself, as an expert skate sharpener. Earlier this year, in China to do a seminar, Beacom found that his luggage didn’t arrive. So he was forced to go shopping for another set of blades. He found a set made by a different manufacturer than what he is used to.

Because he figured he probably wouldn’t use them for free skating again, he had no qualms about altering them to become figure blades. He shaved the toe pick off and put a two-inch radius hollow in them. Translated, that means the hollow for figure blades is a lot shallower than those for free skate blades. Beacom mounted them on a new pair of Edea boots, and sharpened them himself.

The same Bev Smith article mentions how Aljona customized his boots

Savchenko got hold of Beacom’s boots and – because she has a bling business – she decorated them with sparkly stones. “She puts Swarovski stones on gloves and tights and just about anything she can get her hands on,” Beacom said.

He admits, he’s not really a sparkly kind of guy. “But reluctantly I agreed to have her put those on and I guess it makes me feel very special,” he said.

 

[Skate Talker]

He choreographed this program.

Of course! How did I forget that? Duh