Creature Feature: Disney on Ice brings ‘Monsters, Inc.’ to Orleans Arena

Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005 | 8:11 a.m.

They're big. Furry. Spiked.

One-eyed. Several-eyed. Multi-legged. Disproportioned. Winged and bulbous.

Yet, they skate.

In a remarkable feat of balance and dexterity, Mike Wazowski, James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and Randall Boggs are riding the coattails of their hit movie, "Monsters, Inc.," by performing live in a Disney on Ice production of the same name.

Similar to the movie, they work at the power company in Monstropolis, a city energized (literally) by the screams of petrified children. A child, Boo, breaks into the alien world, causing a psychological uproar over concerns of contamination.

But don't anticipate a rehashed storyline from Disney/Pixar movie. The touring production that comes to the Orleans Arena on Wednesday has its own agenda.

"The one question I always hear is, 'How do you put a movie on ice?'" said Jerry Bilik, Disney on Ice's vice president of creative development. "We don't put a movie on ice. We take the story line and replicate the story line, but we alter it so it works as a live show. It becomes a new vehicle."

Bilik is to Disney on Ice productions what Maike Wazoski is to Sulley. The former music arranger for various television series during the 1970s (including "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky and Hutch") began working with Kenneth Feld in 1979 to put on an ice show similar to the "Ice Capades."

What began with "Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice" became "Walt Disney's World On Ice" in 1981 after Feld approached the megacompany, asking to use its notable characters in his ice shows.

But it was Bilik's small script, written to unite the production numbers, that helped launch the phenomenon that brings children en masse to ice arenas around the world. To Bilik and everyone else's surprise, the audience cheered and applauded during the story line.

"We thought, 'Geez. Maybe we should go through and write a script,'" Bilik said. And they did. There have since been 20 productions. There are eight Disney on Ice shows touring the globe, including "Beauty and the Beast" and Disney/ Pixar's "Finding Nemo" and "Toy Story 2."

With colossal high-tech sets and oversized costumes (Sulley is 8 feet tall), "Monsters, Inc." is the largest Disney on Ice show.

The show incorporates more than 50 closet doors, a large-scale Child Detection Agency vehicle and special effects (such as snow in the Himalaya Mountains). Mr. Waternoose and file clerk Roz are part of the cast, as are extra monsters created specifically for the ice show.

There are acrobatic stunts, choreographed dances undertaken by skaters from Japan, Europe, Canada, the United States, Philippines and France, and an ice show within an ice show, in which cast members perform as professional ice skaters during a dream sequence.

"Everything is oversized," Bilik said. "We want to create this total alien world and it's industrial and it has to be believable. We try to walk a tightrope of a reality of an arena and a fantasy of the story.

"The first Disney show was laughable from our point because we didn't know what we were doing."

Bilik surmises that the music is the reason Disney transfers so well to "skating spectaculars."

"The audience responds emotionally to the music," he said. "Skating is driven by music. You see that in the Olympics. From the very first Disney show, we've rearranged and rescored every note of the music. We've made the music a physical property of the show.

"Once Pixar got on the screen, there was more story line so we would get original underscores (from the movie) then re-create them into musical numbers."

Non-Disney productions, Bilik said, worked equally as well, such as "Wizard of Oz" on ice and "Grease" on ice, but are not marketed as well as Disney.

Essentially, Bilik said, "The link to Disney makes for better business. The kids live to see Mickey and Minnie introduce the show. Whatever their secret is, it's simply a more attractive show. The characters are basically attractive. The story line is attractive. And while it's not in your face, there's a sense of decency.

"The philosophical reason for the success of Pixar is that even though they're monsters, they have human qualities. The monsters go to work singing '9 to 5.' "

Most impressive, Bilik said, are the skaters.

"It's one thing to make a costume that's 8 feet high and a 120-pound costume," he explained. "But it's one thing to see a skater do it."