Gary Beacom
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Gary Beacom (born February 23, 1960) is a Canadian figure skater, choreographer and author. He is a World and Olympic amateur competitor and World Professional Champion.
[edit] Biography
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Beacom began skating at the age of six. He won his first competition three years later and would go on to win the silver medal at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in 1983 and 1984, behind Brian Orser. He finished 11th at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and 10th at the 1984 World Championships.
In the latter part of his amateur competitive career, he coached himself while studying full-time for a university degree. Gary graduated from the University of Toronto in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science in physics and philosophy.
In his professional career he developed into an interesting skater specializing in unusual moves, such as those in his famous performance to Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man.
Perhaps equally remarkable was his performance, in his show Hard Edge, in which he skated covered head to toe (including his face) in black spandex. Of that performance, the esteemed New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff said: "The creative edge that marks Mr Beacom’s extraordinary performances [are] completely different from what one usually sees in skating. He is interested in inventing new ways of moving on ice…” In a cover feature in Dance magazine at the time of Hard Edge, writer Daniel Gesmer observed: “Beacom has created a substantial body of new techniques of real skating…his knowledge of physics and maverick personality make him uniquely qualified to invent new ways of moving on the ice”
Beacom would skate in and choreograph ice shows at Sun Valley, Idaho from 1987 to 1997, where he was a firm crowd favourite. Among his more unusual performances were a number of programmes skated with Gia Guddat, on a total of eight skates - with Gary and Gia using skates on their hands as well as feet.
In 1988 Gary became World Professional Champion - an exceedingly rare accomplishment for a skater who had not previously been a world amateur champion. Since then he has been a principal and guest soloist, featured skater and choreographer with skaters as diverse as Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (their World Tour 1985-1986 and Fire and Ice TV special in 1986); Dorothy Hamill (Nutcracker on Ice, 1989); Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt (Boitano Witt Skating Tour 1989 - 1991); Kurt Browning (Tall In The Saddle TV special, 1990); Stars on Ice (1993); Tour of World Figure Skating Champions (1991 - 1997); Josée Chouinard's Farewell Tour (2001); Jamie Salé and David Pelletier's Golden Homecoming TV special (2002); and most recently with Evgeni Plushenko (Ice Vision tour, Russia 2006 and Stradivarius On Ice tour, Russia, 2007).
A Canadian citizen, he protested against United States income tax, which he did not pay, and was eventually sentenced in 1998 to 21 months in Federal prison. Beacom detailed these events in his 2003 book Apology (Alpha Publishing).
In 2006 he published the book Vade Mecum (Trafford Publishing), a collection of typically articulate (and sometimes unexpected) observations about the art and sport of figure skating.
He told Susan D. Russell, interviewing him for [[International Figure Skating]] magazine in a feature published in August 2006, that Vade Mecum grew organically from a series of essays.
"When I originally set up my website, I was going to write instructional kind of articles which I thought would make my website more interesting. But I eventually decided, as I was putting them together, that they would fit nicely into a book... When you take on a project like writing a book it makes you think a lot more deeply about things. It sort of came together. Whenever I stumbled across a new idea that I felt was important to become a better skater, I would write about it."
Beacom lives with his wife Deena and children Garrison and Stella in Victoria, British Columbia. Deena is a former competitive skater and is now a professional coach at, and director of, the Raquet Club Figure Skating Club of Victoria, where Gary also teaches.
Now 48, Beacom continues to train on-ice several hours a week and skates in ice shows around the world. He has recently conducted a number of on-ice seminars and master classes in Canada and abroad, and he is the associate artistic director of the Canada Ice Dance Theatre.
He told International Figure Skating magazine, “I actually feel like I am skating with more gusto than ever now. I have kept myself in shape. I have many years behind me, a lot of experience and I have reached a level that makes it quite rewarding for me.”
