Kristi Yamaguchi was at the Irvine Ice Arena today in Southern California taping a program and interview for a promotional piece to be aired at an upcoming platinum jeweler's convention or show in Las Vegas. So, unfortunately, this won't make it to TV.

Skating School students were allowed to watch the taping, which lasted about an hour. About 50 people were in attendence, with 1/2 of them young children. The audience was told days in advance to keep very quiet--no clapping, talking, or flash photography. I was amazed at how well we (and especially children) did. There were absolutely no retakes because of the audience. I thought it was very considerate of both the film crew and the rink to allow us in-- they didn't need the audience at all for their purposes.

Kristi skated to a pretty ballad, wearing diamond and platinum jewelry and a gorgeous deep royal purple costume. The dress had a sweetheart neckline with two spaghetti straps on each shoulder; the same color purple sequins were scattered judiously over the whole dress. She looked great.

Sorry--I nor anyone around me knew the name of the ballad, but it definitely gets air play, so maybe these lyrics will ring some bells: "I love him, la-la-la. There is no right or wrong..." er, um... gosh that's pathetic--I thought I knew more of the lyrics! Anyway, it's sung by a female--perhaps Celine Dion?

Kristi's program was confined to one half of the rink for filming purposes, but was surprisingly effective despite the constraints. There were only two jumps in the program-- an axel and a double toe (I think). She repeated several axel jumps right in front of an on-ice camera for close-up shots later--those were definitely singles, so I assume it was a single she performed in the program itself. (You know, I tried very hard to watch for details that I could report back here, however I found myself get caught up in her skating and the overall mood she was creating; it was hard to catch those details!) She did lovely outside edge spirals, a nice layback, and a tiny bit of "pointe" work that was quite nice I thought. It wasn't a difficult program for her, but it was nicely choreographed and interpreted. Maybe watching Kristi skate live made me not mind generic-female- ballads to the extent I usually do.

The program was performed in spotlight, as was her warm-up (which surprised me. I doubt she had ever skated on this surface before). Her warm-up was pretty brief; she then performed the entire program only a few times. Later, a camera man put on rental skates and came out onto the ice with her to do closeups. He also did a little warmup to get used to the skates, which was pretty amusing in contrast to Kristi's skating! He managed to do ok and stay on his feet while taping, despite Kristi landing axels a only few feet away from him! It was during the closeups that Kristi repeated small segments of the program, modifying it by directing all action to the camera, simultaneously emphasizing her hands and the jewelry she was wearing on them.

At the end of the hour, she did an on-ice interview. I was close enough to hear bits of it. Clearly the emphasis was on promoting jewelry and platinum in particular. She was asked what the most exciting time in her life was--answer in brief: winning Olympic Gold. She was asked what she liked about (platinum) jewelry. Her answer was hard to hear, but she said something about how her tastes have gotten more expensive, how she liked platinum. Oh right, this was interesting-- she said something about that at the end of every Stars on Ice tour, the women on the tour go jewelry shopping as a treat to themselves for completing the tour.

She was asked how platinum is like ice or like ice skating (corny I thought, but she handled it well). Answer: it's cool, hard, etc.... she loves ice skating and platinum seems to "fit very well in to that (a close paraphrase)." And I think there was something in there about having won Gold but there being room for platinum, too. Again, all this was pretty hard to hear. I could see, however, that she seemed very relaxed, and answered the questions pretty naturally. I would have choked on some of those corny questions, but she did great, and there were no retakes.

Kristi acknowledged the audience a couple of times, but she did strike me as being a basically shy (but friendly) person when not performing.