Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir ready for 'trip down memory lane' that tour date in Kitchener will bring
Superstar ice dance pair have strong ties to Kitchener-Waterloo
Tessa Virtue recalls skating at the Kitchener Auditorium every Friday and it being a “big deal” to get out on that big ice.
Virtue and ice dance partner Scott Moir, three-time Olympic gold medalists and two-time silver medallists, trained earlier in their career at the Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club, which makes their upcoming tour date in Kitchener all the more special.
“Even just being at the Aud. will bring forth some nostalgia, because we used to practice there every Friday, and it was such a big deal for us to get on that ice in the big Auditorium, so skating back there will be really thrilling,” said the 29-year-old Virtue in a phone interview with the Kitchener Post on Oct 18. Moir and Virtue were reached in Red Deer, AB., prior to their tour date there.
Virtue and Moir, essentially Canadian household names at this point, initiated the 27-city, 29-performance tour through Canada, which is set to come through Kitchener on Oct. 27 at the Aud.
“It’ll be kind of a walk down memory lane for us,” added Moir.
“That’s kind of where we first moved when we moved away from home, we went to Bluevale Collegiate Institute, and we had some great years at the K-W Skating Club with Paul MacIntosh.”
Moir is also quite excited for teammates for Andrew Poje and Kaitlyn Weaver, calling it a “homecoming” for the fellow ice dance pair.
Poje, a Waterloo native, recalls being the flower retriever at Skate Canada International when he was nine years old at the Kitchener Auditorium, in 1996.
Poje met with a certain star Canadian figure skater at the event, who happens to be a fellow perform on the Thank You Canada Tour.
“It was one of the competitions Elvis Stojko was actually competing at, that was one of the first competition, I actually got to meet with him, and we had pizza together,” Poje recalled.
Stojko went onto win the gold at that men’s individual competition, which was sandwiched in between two Olympic silver medals in 1994 and 1998.
“It’s kind of crazy to think how full circle it is I get to share the ice with him,” said Poje, now 31.
He also says a picture exists of the two, but his mother hasn’t had luck in finding it.
Poje and ice dance partner Kaitlyn Weaver, who placed seventh at the Pyeongchang Olympics, are grateful for the opportunity to perform on home ice.
“It’s so special for us to be (performing) in Kitchener,” said Weaver, who is born in Houston, TX., but obtained Canadian citizenship in 2009. “We’re travelling the world, we mostly commonly perform in Japan, Vancouver, Europe; and we never get to come home, and so we’re really going to relish the moments we get to spend on home ice with the home crowd.”
Weaver, 29, and Poje plan to include some of their competitive numbers in their performance, as they are still competing this season and are preparing for nationals.
“It’s a different way of training for us, it’s challenging; it’s new,” explained Weaver. “It’s very valuable because we’re out in front of a crowd every night, and that gives us a lot of valuable feedback for these programs.”
Poje and Weaver also trained under MacIntosh at the K-W Skating Club.
“It’s fun to kind of travel to this sport together, and be able, at 31 years old, to do shows together,” said Moir of performing with Poje.
While Weaver and Poje are incorporating a bit of their competitive routine in, Virtue says she’s excited about the creative possibilities that this performance allows for.
“We’ve always enjoyed kind of the various different types of movement and exploring performance with different rhythms and styles and working with different choreographers, that’s one of the great parts of ice dance, kind of that balance between art and athleticism,” said the London native. “It’s even more fun that we don’t have any rules to abide by, we don’t have any judges to appease, it’s totally carte blanche creatively, and that’s for fun us. It’s a new challenge when you step into that entertainment realm.”
Also starring in the Thank You Canada Tour are a collection of Canadian superstar skaters who have achieved several medals in Olympic and world championship competition. Pairs stars Megan Duhamel and Eric Radford, Kaetlyn Osmond, and Patrick Chan join Virtue, Moir, Poje, Weaver, and Stojko for the tour, which is sold out in Kitchener.
“We had the good fortune of touring for many years and doing various shows around the world, we’ve always had these dreams of how we’d put together our own tour, and coming back from the Pyeongchang Olympics, we got to talking about how we could leverage this platform we have and really have a long-lasting impact on some of the communities that have supported for over two decades. This tour just seemed to be the right fit,” said Virtue, who hails from London.
“There’s such a phenomenal cast here, many of whom we shared that gold medal with in Korea, which was a really special moment in Canadian skating history. We just felt like, lets go, from west to east and hit up as many rinks as possibly and celebrate the success of Canadian skating with all these special people.”
Virtue, Moir, Chan, Duhamel, Radford, and Osmond together won gold at the 2018 Olympics in the team event.
The tour, which is visiting smaller cities from coast-to-coast, kicked off in Abbotsford, BC on Oct.5, and will conclude on Nov. 24 in St. John’s, NL.
“I think the cool thing about this tour is we’re going places we haven’t played very often, or at all,” said Moir.
Ticket prices for the event ranged from $41 to $121.
Photos: Greg Kolz / @danielleearlphotography