Last night we attended a wonderful figure skating show at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, featuring a large cast of American skating champions from the past 60 years, many not seen in shows for decades. We had a terrific time, even with not great seats — our view is above. We’d brought our binoculars, so that helped us enjoy the performances. This show was being taped for TV broadcast on Christmas Day, so in addition to skaters on the ice, there were some who spoke from or were interviewed on the stage by Mary Carillo and others, and during the intermission two original members of the band America played a medley of their hits.

Due to poor lighting and our distance from the ice, most of my shots of the skaters came out like this one of Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval, a favorite of Ellen, who took a few skating lessons from Calla. Like most of the performers, they were great, doing many of the dangerous tricks that made them famous quite a few years ago.

After the main performance, some skaters came back to the ice to redo jumps that hadn’t gone so well, to be edited into the final tape. We were then able to sit much closer, as many people didn’t stay, and I got a few more in-focus shots, like these of Sasha Cohen…

…Kimmie Meisner…

…and Nancy Kerrigan and Paul Wylie about to do a great pairs routine. The roster of skaters was impressive, and many wowed us, including Brian Boitano, Tara Lipinski, Evan Lysacek, Todd Eldridge and Sarah Hughes, in addition to those shown above. Old-timers Richard Dwyer and Tenley Albright showed that they could still be graceful on the ice, while some stars like Kristi Yamaguchi, Scott Hamilton, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Dick Button spoke but did not skate. We enjoyed seeing them all anyway. It was a fine show, and we’re looking forward to watching it again when it’s broadcast.