Fairy godmother a ‘beautiful role’
Calgary native grew up idolizing Manley, but came to prefer ‘performance side of skating’
By putting on hockey skates before she was even in kindergarten, Kathleen O’Neil has wound up being a fairy godmother.
With Disney On Ice, that is. “I’m fortunate enough to portray the role of fairy godmother,” said O’Neil, in her fourth season with Disney On Ice, this time on its Dare To Dream tour. “It’s a beautiful role, I get to be out there and see Cinderella through her transformation and see the reaction of the audience, all the smiles.”
She first put on skates at age four, going along with her brothers to the rink. At seven she put on figure skates for the first time and with picks at the toe of the blades, figure skates take some getting used to after you’re used to hockey skates.
“I enjoyed it from there,” O’Neil said. “I liked it a lot, being on the ice.”
She wasn’t born yet when Elizabeth Manley won her silver medal at the Calgary Olympics in 1988 with a thrilling long program, endearing herself to fans all over the country, then came back out onto the ice to acknowledge the ovation wearing a white Stetson, but that’s O’Neil’s favourite skater.
“She’s definitely up there for me,” O’Neil said. “She’s a little bit rough around the edges, but such a determined, independent woman, she really stands out for me.
“My dad was a volunteer with the Olympics and got to see her and work around her, and told me about her.”
O’Neil, 28, was a competitive figure skater in singles competition, making it as far as Alberta’s provincial championships, but clearly she likes the style of the more showy ice-dance category.
“I realized I preferred the performance side of skating, rather than the technical, competitive side.”
The show features the heroines Cinderella, Belle, Rapunzel, Elsa, Anna and — introduced to the ice show this year — Moana, incorporating bits from Frozen, Tangled, Beauty and the Beast and, of course, Cinderella and Moana. “It’s pretty amazing.” O’Neil said she’s lucky that Calgary is one of only three Canadian cities on the tour, as she got to perform in front of lots of friends and family at the Saddledome.
Friends and a former coach in Vancouver will see her skate at the Pacific Coliseum from today to Sunday.
Unlike competitive figure skating, where hundreds of hours of training come down to a few minutes of competition, Disney On Ice is pretty much all performance, all the time. The cast of 45 skaters gets together about three weeks before touring begins in September and then it’s 10 months of travel, performing eight shows in five days, as they are in Vancouver. That means three shows on the Saturday and two more on the Sunday.
If you’ve got hockey players in your house, you know all about eau de gear, but there are dozens of off-ice Disney crew making sure everything is kept dry between performances and making sure everyone is zipped up after the seven to 10 costume changes during a single performance.
“We have a wardrobe team that travels with us, they make sure we have enough laundry that’s clean and dry,” O’Neil said. “I do remember that one-of-a-kind smell (of hockey equipment being hung to dry).”
She attended school to get a diploma in disabilities studies and has worked with autistic kids, as well as caring for seniors. That may be her calling again down the road, she said, but for now the road itself calls.