Toller Cranston, ‘the Nureyev’ of Figure Skating, Dies at 65
Toller
Cranston fell short of a gold medal in figure skating’s marquee
international events, but he played a major role in popularizing his
sport with a pioneering artistic flair that delighted fans and
influenced champions to come.
“My
accomplishment in skating was about being creative in a virgin sport,”
Cranston told the Canadian magazine Maclean’s in 2004. “It was never the
medals that I won. I was really a thorn in the side of the
establishment.”
Cranston
did win six consecutive Canadian men’s figure skating championships,
along with a world championships bronze medal and an Olympic bronze, in
the 1970s.
But
when news of his death at 65 at his home in San Miguel de Allende,
Mexico, came on Saturday, he was remembered most as a thrilling devotee
of what he called “theater on ice.”
Cranston’s
style was often likened to dancing, and he was sometimes referred to as
the Rudolf Nureyev of figure skating. He did not like to be compared to
anyone else, but as he put it when he was starring in a 1977
professional ice show at the Palace Theater on Broadway, “Our delicate
egos are probably somewhat the same onstage.”
“I’m criticized as flamboyant, arrogant and melodramatic,” he said. “I try to live my life touching extremes.”
In
announcing Cranston’s death, the Canadian Olympic Committee said the
apparent cause was a heart attack. A longtime friend, Jeanne Beker, told
The Toronto Star that Cranston was found dead Saturday morning at the
home where he had lived for many years, pursuing another form of
artistic expression as a painter.
Upon Cranston’s death, Skate Canada called him “a skater with a painter’s eye.”
Cranston,
who retired from competition after the 1976 Olympics, displayed his
form for New Yorkers in May 1977 when he headlined “Toller Cranston’s
the Ice Show” at the Palace.
“He
has the same flamboyance and daring of the Soviet ballet stars at their
most entertaining,” the dance critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote in The New
York Times. “Mr. Cranston has all the superstar spins and turns in the
air and split jumps you want. But there are also the kicks, turns on the
knees and a great deal of arm waving with splayed fingers.”
Debbi
Wilkes of Canada, a former Olympic silver medalist in pairs who was
attending Canada’s national championships in Kingston, Ontario, when
Cranston died, told the Canadian sports network TSN that Cranston worked
to “break down the barriers of the sport that existed so many years
ago.”
Cranston’s
stylishness emerged when figure skating competitions still included the
compulsory tracing of figure eights, which he called “boring and
degrading.”
He
won the Canadian men’s singles crown every year from 1971 to 1976. But
his lackluster scores in the figure eights cost him a chance at
international gold.
Jan
Hoffmann of East Germany won the 1974 men’s world singles championship
at Munich, but Cranston, who was too far behind after the compulsories
to finish better than third, thrilled the 8,000 spectators. He “almost
brought down the roof in Munich’s Olympic Hall with his artistic
jumping” and received a minute-long ovation, United Press International
reported.
He
lagged again in the compulsories when he finished third at the 1976
Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, in which John Curry of Britain,
who was also a pioneer in artistic performances but whose technique was
considered superior to Cranston’s, took the gold.
Toller
Shalitoe Montague Cranston was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on April 20,
1949. His family lived for at time in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, then
settled in the Montreal area.
He began skating at age 7 and honed his skills as a teenager.
After
his competitive years he was a figure skating commentator for the CBC,
headlined ice shows and choreographed championship figure skating
routines before concentrating on his paintings, many with themes related
to skating, while living in a city in Mexico that he chose for its
cosmopolitan atmosphere and its art community. His paintings were shown
at museums and galleries.
Cranston
had two brothers and a sister. He was a nephew of Alan Cranston, the
Democratic senator from California, who died in 2000.
In assessing his career, Cranston drew an analogy to an art form with moving parts.
“I
believe temperament and personality are very important to a performer,”
he said when he was starring in ice shows. “I try to think of myself as
kinetic sculpture while I’m skating.”
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