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Somewhat belated, I'll also give a short report of my impressions of the Mannheim show.

I absolutely loved the show. Couldn't make it last year so I can't tell whether it was better or worse, but one definite pro was the length of the show... It was fun to attend a purely Russian event in Germany. Hadn't it been for other forum members, I would have thought that me and my mum were the only non-Russian speakers there.....

One general and natural thing I remarked was that the celebrities significantly slowed down the speed of the professional skaters, so I enjoyed the "just skaters" numbers more. (Apart from the fact that I didn't follow the Ice Age TV show at all and had not the slightest idea who those stars actually were... but I could tell the superstars from the applause...)

At the intro number, I was like "who is who in that silver outfit", but I was able to recognize Alexei from the very first step he made.

As to Alexei's and Valeria's performances: she fell right at the beginning of the guitar number and nearly dragged him on the ice. Anyway, I liked "Je t'aime" better.

As to Bumbarash, I really loved the passion and feeling in that number. Alexei was the only skater of the show to perform some triple jumps, but he did all of his sals (I think) in the opposite corner, lol. Really enjoyed & joined the "molodets"-choir after Alexei's performance.

We had good seats not too far above the ice. Alexei's encore spin looked overwhelmingly powerful from that perspective. It was so very close! (My mum was also quite impressed and started to woo-hoo. ) Never felt that way about seeing a spin before, but then, well, it was Alexei right in front of me!

Alexei looked great, although he seemed quite tired. This showed not during his performances, but rather when he was bowing. I guess the tour had been long, and he had lifted Miss Lonskaya a couple of times that evening... very well and safely, by the way.

As to the other performances, I remember Petrova/Tikhonov as producing the most magic moment - it was absolutely fascinating, can't remember that feeling from their am career either when I saw them perform live a couple of times.

Although I understand only about 10 words of Russian, I had a lot of fun, mainly because of the hilarious slapstick performances by Irina Slutskaya, Ilya Averbukh and Alexei Tikhonov, and Maria Petrova and Mikhail. In that respect the show was better than the "purely" German shows I have attended so far. Olympic champions don't make it too often to German shows anyway. Let's hope some Russians will tour next year as well! :-)

Maria