One singular sensation
Every little step he takes.
One thrilling combination
Every move that he makes.
— “A Chorus Line”
Timing is everything. The 4 1/2 minutes of figure skating at last January’s U.S. Championships that turned Jason Brown from darling of figure skating cognoscenti to national sensation — at least briefly — might have attracted little attention if they had not occurred a month before he would compete in the 2014 OIympics.
The focus on that impending Olympics meant the dwindling audience for Brown’s sport had been enlarged substantially, and he went overnight from unknown to being recognized in airports (thanks, in part, to his trademark ponytail.)
There now are about 31/2 years until the next Winter Games, 40 months during which Brown, like most Olympic athletes, will compete mostly out of sight and out of mind of all but hard-core fans. His next step in the long haul toward the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics comes Friday at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates when Brown does the short program at Skate America, first event in the annual Grand Prix Series.
“I have always enjoyed being under the radar,” Brown said. “Kori (Ade, his coach) tells me that I’m ‘intrinsically motivated’ and because of that, the outside world never affects what I do on a daily basis inside the rink.”
The diminished spotlight is not all bad. It will give the 19-year-old from Highland Park time to develop his technical skills and broaden his artistic reach without the scrutiny that could lead him to consider every performance as a challenge to top the “Riverdance” free skate that drew 4.4 million YouTube views.
And it should help the reigning U.S. silver medalist avoid being the worst kind of singular sensation: a one-time wonder.
“I feel no different about myself and my approach to my training than I did before last season,” Brown said. “I also recognize that a sensation is just that … and sensations, like trends, come and go. But my goal is to be a consistent player in the game for years to come.”
His new free skate, to Maxime Rodriguez’s musical interpretation of Tristan and Isolde, a story based in part on medieval Celtic myth, has a cultural link to Riverdance, a musical celebrating traditional Irish song and dance. Brown now is interpreting Tristan, a British knight in an ill-fated love with a princess from court of his Irish enemy.
Little else about the programs seems similar.
The lively, upbeat feeling of Riverdance required intense, non-stop physical effort from Brown. But he has found Tristan, with its tragic overlay and slower pacing, to be equally exhausting for a different reason.
“I thought Tristan would be easier, but it isn’t,” Brown said. “It is very emotionally demanding. I am trying to express emotion the whole time because it is such a powerful piece, and I want to put so much into each movement and facial expression.”
At this first international competition of the season, last month’s Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany, the judges clearly liked Brown’s presentation. In winning the first senior-level event of his career, Brown received his highest free skate program component scores — 10 points higher than his 2013 Nebelhorn marks.
“To be rewarded with that early in the season is really exciting because I know how much more I have in me with this program,” Brown said. “That was just scratching the surface.”
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It is like being a sensation.
What Jason Brown really wants is to dig deeper so he can stand the test of time.
Twitter @olyphil