Gay Figure Skaters Pave Their Own Way in “Icebreakers”

In June, 1994, I took the F train out to Coney Island to root for my friend Phil, who was skating, solo, in the Gay Games. From the bleachers of the Abe Stark Arena, our college friends cheered wildly as Phil, who was a novice, performed a few simple spins. But the most startling event was the couples competition, which featured a pair of male skaters, dressed in camouflage, with tape over their mouths in an “X”—a direct protest against the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The couple who followed them—two shirtless men, around the same height, alternately lifting each other up and rolling over each other with playful, affectionate aggression—struck me as equally political, suggesting not just what was banned but what was possible. It was like watching two trees dance.

In the short documentary “Icebreakers,” Jocelyn Glatzer and Marlo Poras explore the legacy of the Gay Games, nearly half a century after the institution was founded, in 1982, as an all-embracing extension of—and also a challenge to—the Olympics. Their film is built around a handful of key figures, including the renowned coach Wade Corbett (who trained Phil, back in 1994) and the lesbian skater Laura Moore, a cheerful firecracker who began her career after nearly twenty years in the closet. She sums up ice skating, crisply, as “a very gay sport” and “a very homophobic sport.”

Glatzer and Poras dramatize that tension through interviews with Joel Dear and Christian Erwin, who teamed up for the couples competition at the 2018 Gay Games, in Paris, and Mark Stanford, a Black gay skater with H.I.V. Many of the obstacles these athletes face are institutional. Russia, where even discussing L.G.B.T.Q.+ identity is illegal, dominates Olympic-level skating; few pros are “out,” for fear of hurting their marketability. And, as Corbett notes, traditional figure skating hinges on a vision of heterosexual romance that’s both erotic and formulaic: a glittery princess tossed in the air, spun by a powerful man. This model gets into the head of gay competitors, too. After years of skating with a female partner, Dear felt “uneasy” skating with a man. When Erwin told his mother of his plan, she said, “Isn’t that a family show?”

There have been encouraging developments since “Icebreakers” was shot: the U.K., following the lead of Finland and Canada, has agreed to let same-sex couples compete on a national level. The success of “Heated Rivalry,” a Canadian TV series about closeted hockey players, has made these issues visceral (and hot) to a mainstream audience. But watching the film, with its dizzying montage of skaters—raw amateurs and sleek pros, swishy and butch, comedic and sincere, boldly solo and intimately paired—made me crave more than baby steps. Hearing Dear speak about his anxieties, then seeing him glide across the ice, tenderly, in tandem with Erwin, took me back to 1994, and to the sensation of witnessing something truly new: a liberation available to everyone, even those up in the bleachers.