Stéphane Lambiel creates a world of magical skating and live music
When you arrive in Champéry, Switzerland, it feels like leaving the mundane world behind. As the small train climbs into the valley, past chalets and stands of trees, the tall peaks of the Dents du Midi come into view, snow still clinging to the slopes. It makes me think of entering a magical kingdom, maybe Rivendell, the hidden valley of the elves in Lord of the Rings. For the skating fans who arrived from all over the world to watch ‘L’Apprenti Sorcier’ the most common exclamation was, “I can’t believe this place is real!”
Nestled at the edge of the village is the Palladium du Champéry, home to the Skating School of Switzerland. In this rink with its view of the mountains, Stéphane Lambiel and his team train elite skaters, most notably Shoma Uno, Deniss Vasiljevs, and Koshiro Shimada.
It’s a place that is easy to romanticize. Looking up from the rink, you feel the immensity of the space between you and the peaks while you remain safely cradled in the valley. It is a place to dream big dreams and to be nurtured to achieve them. Each day the sun rises and sets behind mountains that turn red in the last of the light, and in the morning the ice is fresh and smooth, a stage ready for new stories to be told.
While Stéphane performs as a guest in several shows around the world each year, L’Apprenti Sorcier is the first large show he has produced since “Ice Legends” in 2016. And it was Stéphane’s show, in every way. He worked with Beatrice to choose the music and choreographed the majority of the programs alongside his longtime collaborator and “muse” Salome Brunner. While the narrative gave room to his students to take star positions on the ice, it was his passion, ambition, perfectionism, and kindness that shone through every aspect of the production. It was clear in the rehearsals that each skater, from Shoma Uno down to the youngest ensemble member, received their share of Stéphane’s encouragement – and his high expectations -and they all worked very hard to rise to the challenge.
For two days in August, the Palladium became the stage for a magical story, not only in metaphor but in reality. “L’Apprenti Sorcier” was a special kind of ice show, combining some of the world’s best figure skaters with the beauty of live piano. It was produced to mark the 25th year of the Rencontres Musicales de Champéry, a classical music festival that takes place each summer in the small Swiss mountain village. It also celebrated ten years of the Skating School of Switzerland, which Stéphane Lambiel founded in Champéry in 2014. Stéphane and pianist Beatrice Berrut both grew up in this region and have known each other since they were in school. Their collaboration is a celebration of two of Valais’ most successful offspring – and a gift from them back to the area that raised them.
The show opens with the title piece, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, featuring Skating School of Switzerland coach Angelo Dolfini as the sorcerer, and the 12-year-old Swiss skater Yakov Poltorak as his apprentice.
The story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice comes from the 1797 poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It tells the story of a young magician attempting to tackle his chores using spells he doesn’t fully understand and which quickly get out of hand. The music was written in 1897 by Paul Dukas, and popularized by the 1940 Disney film Fantasia.
On the ice, as soon as the sorcerer has gone to bed, the mischief begins. A group of sprites (young students of the school) begin to play and Yakov enjoys conjuring creatures (the stars of the show) and making them dance. The introduction flips the conventions of ice shows: Stéphane, Shoma, and the rest of the stars are introduced without fanfare, and it looks like the student is choreographing the teacher as Yakov pretends to move the skaters around like his puppets. But he doesn’t retain control for long – the spirits, ghosts, and all the magical creatures are strong, and they start to push the apprentice around – until the sorcerer finally returns and order is restored.
Within this title piece, the themes of the show emerge: students and teachers, and magical transformation. The topsy-turvy fantasia concoction is just the beginning of Yakov’s journey of magical exploration, as each of the numbers adds to his journey and education. Good magic, evil magic, chaotic, uncontrollable, beautiful, the ideal fairy tale and the messy reality – in the next hour, we see it all.
The Finnish ice dancers Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis were first to take the stage, skating to Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt. This piece combines the grace and romanticism of some of their recent free skates with a playful “friska” section. Their dance is mimicked by Yakov in a sweet moment. It’s a reminder that classical music, and skating to it, doesn’t have to be always heavy and serious.
Next Yakov’s journey takes him into more mysterious realms, and we hear two pieces composed by Beatrice.
First, in “What the Forest Whispers”, Marin Honda portrays a spirit moving through the trees, floating almost silently over the ice. In this piece, choreographed by Salome Brunner, Marin made me think of a snowy owl, ethereal, ghostly, glimpsed like a dream between the trees and then gone.
The second piece “Bipolar Mermaid”, is very different.
Giulia Isceri (a professional skater and coach at the Skating School of Switzerland) portrays a complicated, sometimes tortured “femme fatale.” Her piece was choreographed with hip-hop dancer Khoudia Toure, and includes many unusual shapes and movements, including rolling on the ice and pretending to flap her “fins”. It could be comical, but it is performed seriously, and we are enraptured by a magical creature who is not human but still experiences the tortures of human emotions.
When Giulia sees Yakov, she tries to scare him away from the dangers of the underwater world, but they also share a moment of comfort and connection.
From this point, we don’t see all the interactions with Yakov and the magical personalities he meets on his journey, but can imagine them appearing to him, like visions that appear as you go deeper into a dream.
Stéphane Lambiel skates two programs in the show, and both touch on the themes of romantic love.
The first, to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, is a duet with Satoko Miyahara. It shows the ideal love, the love from a fairy tale. Stéphane’s skating causes the briars to fade away; the briars, in this case, are the adolescents of the skating school, in rose-red dresses, who surround Satoko as she sleeps on the ice.
The choreography embraces the strengths of these two singles skaters, and they alternate taking center stage in their courtship. But they also partner well and even complete three lifts in the program. It helps this isn’t their first time skating together; they collaborated with Shizuka Arakawa to perform Miss Saigon in 2022. While Sleeping Beauty has a romantic theme, it’s the friendship and mutual admiration between the two skaters that shine through, and we see how much they enjoy sharing the ice.
Next to take the stage was Shoma Uno, performing to the music from Harry Potter, rearranged by Beatrice. The number is brief but left a powerful impression with his jumps and the urgency of his skating.
Shoma makes a heroic figure, and you sense that he is facing down dark forces and overcoming challenges. I have a tough time with Harry Potter these days, thanks to the bigotry of the author, but the archetypes that Shoma represents are much older and more powerful, and the music is skillfully rearranged to give us something new.
It’s an incredible gift to have a new program from Shoma, and what makes it even more remarkable is that he chose to skip attending the Olympic medal ceremony in Paris because it conflicted with the dress rehearsal for L’Apprenti Sorcier. Stéphane made sure that the audience appreciated that they had a two-time world champion – and three-time Olympic medalist! – in this little village in Switzerland.
Koshiro Shimada skated his competitive free skate to Danse Macabre, which he is reusing in the upcoming season. However, it was an extended version to accommodate the live performance, making it an impressive artistic and athletic feat, with the full complement of jumps completed over the 6 minutes of the program. The performance built the case for longer free skates, or fewer required elements, since the program had time to breathe and develop, and never felt long. I also appreciated how much he has settled into the character of the piece, dark but at times whimsical, and the extended slow section actually improved the pacing of the whole number.
I realized at this point in the show that the order of the skaters also reflected the depth of their connection to the Skating School of Switzerland and Champéry. Juulia, Mathias, and Marin are friends of Stéphane; Giulia Isceri coaches in Champéry, while Satoko has spent the summer there as a guest coach and collaborated with Stéphane several times since her retirement. Then we have Shoma, who came to Stéphane already a champion, but built the most successful part of his career with his support; Koshiro, who has skated in Champéry since the summer of 2017, when he arrived as a junior, and finally Deniss, Stéphane’s first senior student, who joined the school in 2016. In Shoma, Koshiro, and Deniss, we see Stéphane’s apprentices, who have each grown and thrived under his teaching; and, in the finalé, he allows them to surpass him.
But before we get to that moment, Stéphane reminds us that he is still the Sorceror, the master of the blade, capable of casting a powerful spell. His performance of the Addagiato from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor tells the story of real love (as contrasted to the ideal in Sleeping Beauty). The program has stages, showing the meeting of lovers, their struggles, and then their deeper understanding.
Stéphane told Absolute Skating, “Mahler composed this piece as a love letter to his wife, and I wanted to acknowledge this tribute to Mahler by creating my own interpretation of what love represents to me.
It’s about exploring the various phases of a relationship. There is the initial moment where we meet, get to know each other with all our little quirks, and we decide to share a vision of the future. And that’s where this moment of passion happens. And then, after the spin, there is a moment of turbulence, as I think no relationship is without its conflicts or miscommunication or misunderstandings. So, there is this heavy and dramatic turbulence happening after which comes a moment of quietness, with a sensation of comfort, and security, which leads to the phase of actually meeting a person from a different perspective. The ending section mirrors the beginning with the reverse movements, serving as a reminiscence of the first meeting but with all the experiences you shared. It definitely feels different because the other person has shaped you, has given you so much, and you’re being grateful for that.”
Stéphane performs difficult feats of technical skating in this program, but the technique is always in service of the emotional narrative of the piece. While I loved the program when I saw it live six months ago at Music on Ice, it had grown and breathed in new ways with the live piano accompaniment.
As Beatrice played the final notes, Stéphane held out his hand, reaching for the beloved, I found myself holding back tears. Then I saw that Stéphane himself was brushing at his eyes. This is his power, to move his audience to emotional depths, with the authenticity of his own emotional connection to the music.
Stéphane was a little choked up as he thanked Béatrice and then introduced the final number, performed by Deniss Vasiljevs. Deniss was simply named “our champion” – the Skating School’s champion, and Champéry’s, as much as he is Latvia’s.
Deniss skated to the Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, an extended piece that combines several solo portions with sections performed by each of the ensembles.
From the first notes, Deniss is the firebird. I’ve seldom seen a skater so perfectly meld to a piece of music. This piece represents the young apprentice grown into his powers. He is transformed into a magical creature in a golden city, who tames the chaos and defeats the forces of evil. Deniss’ speed is like flight, like a flaming arrow; he portrays the torture and dignity of the bird crumbling and in distress, and then in the final moments, transcendentally free.
The choreography also makes wonderful use of the young students, like the ensemble of the ballet, to add to the scale and grandeur of this final confrontation (and it’s worth mentioning the quality of this ensemble, which included skaters like the two-time Latvian champion Sofja Stepcenko, who has recently moved to work with Stéphane). Stéphane once said he wished he could tour with a company of skaters like Sergei Diaghilev toured with the Ballet Russes, performing pieces like the Firebird and the Rites of Spring. While we are used to seeing the Firebird in figure skating, here it took on the complexity and majesty of the original ballet form, while embracing the unique power of the ice to create speed and flight.
In the final moments of The Firebird, each of the soloists returns, transmuted into citizens of the golden city, and takes their turn at center stage with spread eagles, spirals, and hydroplanes, one breathtaking moment of grace after another. As an audience member, I struggled because I wanted to cheer for each skater and give them their moment of appreciation, but I also wanted to keep silent and simply let the music swell to its conclusion. Here the conventions of skating shows, and classical music, conflicted!
After the final bow, the audience gave a standing ovation. And then we got an extra gift – a playful number with Stéphane, Shoma, Koshiro, and Deniss to “Higitus Figitus”.
The gifts kept coming because the second night of the show was also Deniss’ 25th birthday. We all sang to him as he skated a little improvisation, and Koshiro brought him a big bouquet and a big hug. The audience did not want to stop clapping, getting the skaters to perform encores, and bow again.
The enthusiasm was extra special when you remember the audience was not just skating fans, but also classical music aficionados, curious tourists, and locals. I had wondered about the residents of Champéry, going about their lives next to some of the world’s best figure skaters. Does Champéry know what it has in the Skating School? If there was any doubt before, there isn’t now. I spoke to several residents who saw the show, and one, the owner of the backpacker hostel, went both nights. She said she felt like she was floating, not walking, afterward. She remembered that Stéphane said that the support of the village is a gift for his school, and that she feels the gift is reciprocated by their pride in having the school located in their community.
As the rink sits in the circle of the mountains, L’Apprenti Sorcier was the center of these circles of love and community, radiating from Stéphane to the Skating School, to the village of Champéry, to the fans. We gave energy to the skaters, and had that energy returned even more strongly back to us. These disparate ingredients – a small village in the Alps, live classical music, Olympians, and the dozens of nations represented by the skaters and audience – were all bound together by the spell of this work of art.
For a moment, I really believed that an ice show COULD defeat the forces of evil in the world. It’s a spell that continues to ripple outwards from Champéry, and may it keep reminding us all of the magic of art and live performance.
It is astonishing to think that most of these masterpieces will only be skated in these two performances. At least we can take comfort in the fact that the show was recorded, and will be broadcast in Switzerland later this year.
