icenetwork.com

David Wilson and Kitty Carruthers. (Liz Leamy)

By Liz Leamy, special to icenetwork.com

(07/11/2008) - David Wilson certainly has one heck of a story. Just ask any of the coaches who heard him speak at the Professional Skaters Association conference in Chicago this May, where he delivered a keynote address.

Wilson, one of the premier choreographers in the sport today, had an interesting prediction about himself as a child. He thought he was going to be an architect when he grew up. As fate would have it, his intuition was partly on target, since he designs and builds some of the finest skating programs around.

Last season alone, he crafted winning short and long programs for fellow Canadian Jeffrey Buttle, the 2008 world champion. He also created routines for Jessica Dubé and Bryce Davison of Canada, who clinched the world pairs bronze, as well as Canadian champion Joannie Rochette. Over the past several years, Wilson has done medal-winning work for Yu-Na Kim of Korea; Nobunari Oda of Japan; and Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, the Canadians who won world ice dance silver medals in 2006 and 2007.

"I love what I do and I am blessed to be here," he said. "Anything is possible with a good spirit and good heart."

An inspired start

In his younger years, Wilson trained in Toronto with Osborne Colson, the esteemed late Canadian Olympic and world team coach. He also worked with Petra Burka, an Olympic bronze medalist and the 1965 world champion, with whom he flourished. During his tenure with Burka, Wilson reached the gold figure and freestyle test rung and competed through the novice level.

"She made me feel that I had something special in me," he said.

Although he showed promise, Wilson said his heart wasn't in competition. Rather, he only enjoyed skating when nobody was around.

"I was painfully self conscious," he explained, adding that watching skaters like Brian Orser, the two-time Canadian Olympic silver medalist, at competitions was a bit of a deterrent to him as well.

Wilson also started to suffer from Osgood-Schattler disease, an inflammation of the growth plate on the knee, in his later teens. Despite undergoing some effective surgery, it represented enough of an obstacle to prompt Wilson to retire from competing by the age of 18.

At this stage, Wilson decided to pursue the professional show circuit. He performed with Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice, then two of the top shows in the business.

Wilson described this experience as a major turning point in his career because he had the opportunity to work with Sarah Kawahara, the esteemed American choreographer. One day during a rehearsal, Kawahara said she didn't 'feel' Wilson's skating, which sparked a powerful reaction within him.

"I thought I was pretty expressive and when I realized I wasn't, it opened me up to a whole other way of seeing and doing things," he remembered.

Several skaters also influenced Wilson during this time. He said that this contingent included Simone Grigorescu, Tom Dickson and the late Robert Wagenhoffer, who were all renowned for their fantastic artistic abilities.

"They performed in a manner I had never seen before; they were so involved in their movement," said Wilson.

By 1991, Wilson had grown tired of shows and decided it was time to settle down and buy his 'own fridge.' At that point, he decided to relocate to Montreal. There, he began to coach with his friend and longtime partner, Jean-Pierre Boyer, and begin teaching.

Several years later, the duo decided to move their business to the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club. It was there where Wilson and his partner were first asked to try their hand at choreography.

"J.P. had already said 'yes,' so I figured I would do it, too," said Wilson.

Suddenly, he started to realize he was enjoying his newfound line of work. His first client was a senior lady who he said was "reasonably happy" with his programs. Several skaters later, he saw that this was indeed something he might have a knack for.

"Sometimes we have hidden talents that we might not know about," he shrugged.

By the mid-1990s, he had been hired to do programs for Sebastien Britten, the 1995 Canadian men's champion, an opportunity he considered himself lucky to have had.

"With Sebastien, I began to find my voice," he explained.

Tough times lead to career breakthrough

The excitement of this period in Wilson's life was to be short-lived. Later that year, his father, with whom he had always had a close relationship, passed away at a young age. Just prior to this, his relationship with Boyer had ended, and Wilson decided to start working on his own. This was a risky financial move, since at the time he was working under an hourly, rather than flat rate, and could only be guaranteed 10 hours of work per week.

Shortly thereafter, Wilson had a lucky break when he received a call from Orser, who had been performing with Stars on Ice and needed some new programs. The dynamic between them turned out to be terrific.

"We had this great energy between us and to see how much he (Brian) believed in me -- I can't tell you how much that did for me," said Wilson.

Nearly one year into this new chapter of his life, however, Wilson was hit with another major blow when his mother passed away just eleven months after the death of his father.

"She was nurturing and full of sunshine, and she always believed in me," he said.

Somehow, Wilson found the strength within himself to grow from this situation. "Once you realize your parents are gone, you kind of see that you are them," he explained.

Right around this time, Wilson had also been asked to do choreography for Midori Ito, the Japanese jumping wunderkind of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He had been assigned two competitive programs for her, as she planning to make a comeback at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.

Although the comeback never materialized, Machiko Yamada, Ito's coach, liked Wilson's work and asked him to work with her younger skaters. Wilson said this turned out to be a wonderful learning experience and described how Mrs. Yamada would sit by the sidelines all day long chain-smoking cigarettes, watching his every move.

"When you know you are pleasing someone, you want to try really hard to do your best," he said.

IJS proves to be a windfall

Over the next few years, Wilson continued to do top-tier work. The real break in his career, however, occurred when the International Skating Union decided to implement a new code of points judging system -- now called the International Judging System (IJS) -- following the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic judging scandal.

The manner in which Wilson always had formulated his programs carried a similar philosophy to that of the IJS. In fact, he said he even got a call from Louis Stong, a prominent Canadian world and Olympic team coach, at that time, telling him the new system would be ideal for him.

"I like the IJS. It makes sense and encourages all aspects of the sport in a really good way," stated Wilson.

At that point, Wilson took the ball and really began to run with it. In 2005, he designed a memorable free dance for Dubreuil and Lauzon to music from the Somewhere in Time soundtrack that not only helped them capture the 2006 world silver medal, but earned major artistic accolades.

From that point on, much of what Wilson touched seemed to turn to medal. He worked extensively with Buttle, and the rest has been history.

Wilson said he owes much of his success to the talent of the skaters he has worked with and to those who have supported him. He is also quick to credit the structure of the IJS.

"The IJS encourages everyone to keep the integrity and complexity of skating so that it still has artistic involvement," he said. Today, Wilson continues to work at the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, an environment in which he seems to flourish. There, he works alongside Orser and Tracy Wilson (who is no relation to David), the 1988 Olympic ice dance bronze medalist.

Perhaps more than anything, he gleans happiness from the entire process of crafting a program, from the beginning stages of searching for music to the end product of seeing a skater perform the work.

Most of all he cited the importance of music, and said it plays an integral role for the skater, since it affects them and everyone else who happens to hear it.

"Music is a universal language and it speaks to all of us. It goes right inside of you and it chronicles the human spirit," he said.

Spoken like a true architect of his own destiny.