November 25, 2025, by Reginald Persy
For Pavel Viugov, it always begins with the ice. It’s always there, staring back at him like a white-blue canvas, waiting to be carved into a story with expressive movements and nonstop motion. Growing up in Saint Petersburg, a city that is frosted over with icy silence each winter, Viugov and the ice are old friends. He wasn’t born on the ice, but he might as well have been.
This is his story.
“I don’t really just think of myself as a performance skater anymore,” he says. “When I step out onto the ice, the lights seem brighter, the music is louder, the audiences are bigger,” he adds. “For me this is not just a sport. This is performance art.”
Viugov has performed in all kinds of settings. At first as a youth growing up in Russia, later as a performer with Royal Caribbean and Disney, and now part of Holiday on Ice’s Cinema of Dreams. He will soon embark on a tour of 21 cities across Germany that will run from November through April. The production will set up camp in each city for a few days and then move on. Such is the road life and such is the life of a performer who mixes dance with acrobatics.
“I like to skate fast,” he says. “I like the way my body feels in the air. And I like the sound of my blades cutting into the ice.”
No Rulebook
According to Viugov, there is no rule book for what he does. His Instagram account is full of short videos of him pulling off daring tricks, including his signature backflip, but his artistry is not measured in the ability to pull off a particularly complicated stunt but in the sum of all parts.
“Oh I still fall all the time,” he says. “I have this kind of relationship with the ice. I ask it to go easy on me.”
Mostly though, he is pure grace defying gravity. He mixes street performance and acrobatics into his repertoire. He likes the contrast between the beauty of the skating world with the grittiness of street performance. Finding the balance between the two is purely intuitive.
“You just have to explore your own limits,” says Viugov. “You have to find what feels right.”
Technical finesse is key. Like a painter who has absolute control of his wrists, or a photographer who knows just how to explore the interplay between shadow and light, Viugov can pull off quick spins, stop clean, and then go into another series of motions that blend into a colorful blur. Observing him out on the ice, you can see he is after something. But what is Viugov chasing?
Life as Theatre
Joining Holiday on Ice’s new show, Cinema of Dreams, is the culmination of Viugov’s own dreams in a way. From Saint Petersburg, he first performed on Royal Caribbean cruise lines, playing the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen in a retelling of his fairytales, and later he moved on to Disney on Ice, where he learned the ins and outs of a series of heroes and villains.
Conceptually, Holiday on Ice’s Cinema of Dreams is at another level. It centers on an old movie theater that comes back to life. The storyline explores different film worlds — love, action, science fiction — all through skating. Viugov has been cast as the principal boy soloist, performing at the center. Here again he will face his old friend, the ice, and together they will conjure up something special for the audience, allowing them to feel something all together.
“People really lose themselves in this show,” says Viugov. “I have seen it in rehearsals. The performance summons so many emotions that I think they feel all kinds of things watching it. The most important thing is that we get them to feel. That’s what matters in the end,” he says.
Viugov credits the producers with giving him the freedom to explore his abilities on ice. “They trust me and believe in me,” he says. “I can try out new things in rehearsals, fail, and try again.”
Every Show is Different
As a seasoned performer, Viugov says that every show is different. Whether it be on a cruise ship out at sea, or in touring productions like Cinema of Dreams, where the entire cast and crew will move from city to city through the spring, there will be surprises ahead. It can be demanding, he adds, both physically and emotionally, to undertake such a huge endeavor. There are those load on days and load off days, the long nights, and the intimacy of touring.
“We’re really like one big family in the end,” says Viugov. “We support each other through it all.”
It’s also a kind of reward to at last perform after the hard slog of creating a show, with its endless rehearsals, moving deadlines, and unexpected challenges that seem to pop up out of nowhere.
“You are tired, for sure,” says Viugov. “But hearing the audience react is worth all of that effort.”
In the future, Viugov says he would like to play a greater role in show creation, perhaps choreographing for a production like Cirque du Soleil someday. But as for now, he’s just waiting for opening night to show off his adagio work and aerials in front of a big European audience.
And when it’s all over, the lights will fade and the rink will grow quiet and empty again. Then Viugov will skate out one last time. He will stay a while to enjoy the silence after all the motion. He will stay a while to have a chat with his old friend, the ice. “I like those moments,” he says. “They feel honest.”
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