Why Art Matters: Manleywoman Skatecast

Allison with living history.

There are icons in the sport of figure skating whose stories are well known, told over and over until they become the fabric for which Olympic tales are weaved.

To concentrate on those figures solely is to miss a vast majority of the heart and soul of figure skating. And that is where Allison Manley's Skatecast comes to play.

Manley started her podcast in 2007, the first episode with Canadian and World champion Kurt Browning. And her list of guests has only grown from there: she has interviewed old time show skaters, adult skaters, parents, choreographers, costume designers, judges, skate designers and coaches. She has created a living audio history book of our sport through her interviews, revealing long forgotten anecdotes and landscapes for how skating has transformed over the years.

She begins every interview by asking "what is your most embarrassing skating moment?" a telling opportunity for us, the listeners to hear these iconic champions reveal themselves as honest to God human beings who, like so many of us, have had that tripping-on-toepicks moment that proves skating is a slippery sport.

I do have a favorite skatecast, her interview with jumpin' Jozef Sabovcik. As a product of the 80s, we were raised on Cold War imagery, and it was hard NOT to imagine all life behind the Iron Curtain as cold and gray. He revealed what it was like living there and training, to be a man without a country, and to adopt a new country as his home.

I picked up an ice show program at a garage sale for a quarter, and was baffled by it, since I had never heard of the revue, a few of the names sounding vaguely familiar. All I had to do was wait a few episodes. Episode 57 was an interview with show skater Roy Blakely, who has amassed a huge skating memorabilia collection over 70 years. What I possessed was a program from his skating debut, a show for the US troops overseas in Germany.

Search for ManleyWoman Skatecast at iTunes, and listen to history. Let's cross our fingers Dick Button finally grants her that dream come true interview.