Disney on Ice brings family favorites to Mellon Arena

Everybody needs a little magic in life. Producer Kenneth Feld wanted to give his audiences a century's worth.

Feld, who has molded a career out of producing quality family entertainment, enlisted Jerry Bilik, vice president of creative development for Feld Entertainment, to pack "100 years of Disney magic" into an ice extravaganza and take it on the road.

The result, a compilation of some of Walt Disney's best creative masterpieces, is a show of which Mickey Mouse - the symbol of all things Disney - is proud to be a part. "Walt Disney's 100 Years of Magic" comes to Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena for nine performances beginning Wednesday and running through March 2.

Bilik says he and Feld pored over vintage Disney cartoons and feature films to figure out how to "take all that product and make it into a two-hour show" that pays tribute to the late Walt Disney (1901-66) who would have been 100 years old on Dec. 1, 2001. The result is a production that features scenes from some of the best Disney feature films, including "Pinocchio," "Toy Story," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "Mulan," "A Bug's Life" and "The Lion King."

In order to maintain a cohesive element to the show, Bilik says he used characters to tie pieces together and segue from one scene to the next. For example, he says, "we had to figure how to get from 'Pinocchio,' one of the older films, to 'Toy Story,'" he says. "So we used Jiminy Cricket, who is telling a joke about how a toy came to life (in 'Pinocchio') when the mean sergeant from the Green Army (a 'Toy Story' character) yells at him for being funny."

The unlikely transition between unrelated segments adds an element of surprise to the show, Bilik says, "and the audience never knows what to expect."

"100 Years of Disney Magic" is the 20th Disney ice show that Feld has produced, and also the 20th show in which Bilik has played a major role. He says that Feld originated the genre of ice shows that tell a story, and each season has proven better than the last.

"Every year and every show, we keep tweaking the productions," Bilik says. His most recent change to the current show was only a month ago in Hartford, where he says he made some alterations to keep the program flowing at an even pace.

The technical aspects of the Disney ice shows - from lighting and choreography to costumes and special effects - have also improved over the years, he says.

"You have a really bad arena for sound," he says, referring to the Mellon Arena, "and we have evolved a new sound system that works well even in Pittsburgh."

Bilik recalls the first Disney on Ice production 20 years ago that was supposed to focus on "a parade of Disney characters." To give the show an interesting storyline, Bilik created the premise that Pinocchio gets lost in Disneyland, and Geppetto goes looking for him, meeting various characters along the way.

"It's not 'Hamlet,' but it worked," he says.

That production was the first time an ice show "even thought of continuity," Bilik says. "Before that, we were doing Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice. We were really bored."

He says one of the biggest challenges of "100 Years of Magic" was with the final scene in Act I, "It's a Small World," which re-creates the popular boat ride attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. "We had to reverse the whole concept of the ride," he says, having the audience sit still while the attraction "moves" in front of them. The tribute to the Disney theme parks also features the Electrical Light Parade, he adds, which presented its own share of challenges to re-create.

Bilik says the success of Disney on Ice productions is due not only to the sets and storylines that create a mood and theme, but to the skaters who make the show come alive. Unlike a typical ice revue, skaters in a Disney show often are required to act out the parts they are skating, he says, in addition to performing stunts and routines on the ice.

"The skaters are very self-motivated," Bilik says. "When they have to act, they embrace it. They feel it's a challenge. We can develop all the technical aspects of the show, but it's the skaters' skills that keep us going. They're not out there coasting; they're giving their all. The real show is not what we design but rather the crew and cast's performance."

One of the young performers in the Disney ice show is Japanese figure skater Tomoaki Koyama, who skates the role of Chinese leader Captain Shang opposite Anne Ramos as Mulan in the "Mulan" scene. Koyama competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, and skated with a Japanese ice show for three years before joining the Feld troupe in 1997.

He says he finds performing in the Disney show different from competitive skating and is enjoying the new challenge.

"It's like a role-playing game," he says. When he landed the part, he says, "I had to struggle to make the character come to life."

Koyama still lives in Japan and says his home is only 15 minutes from Tokyo DisneySea, the latest addition to Walt Disney's theme park group that opened in September 2001. He has been enamored with the sport of figure skating since he was 9 years old, he says, and he offers advice to youngsters who might look at him as a role model for their own ambitions.

"I always tell them that figure skating takes time," he says. "They need to be patient and practice constantly to get their own style."