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Zabato Bebe: What was he Doing Before the Pandemic?

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Zabato Bebe: What was he Doing Before the Pandemic?

Most who think of Austria and winter sports will have downhill racing or ski jumping come to mind.

Zabato Bebe, who grew up in Vienna, opted for figure skating.

“I always loved to climb trees, run around and ice skating,” Bebe said. “I tried everything and my mom let me do whatever I wanted. Skating was a natural thing to do. It combined sport and art. My mom’s a teacher, an art history teacher, and my dad teaches African dance, and figure skating blends both sports and art forms on ice. It felt natural.”

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What was Zabato Bebe doing before COVID?

Bebe was taking figure skating to another level as part of Cirque du Soleil Crystal - Cirque du Soleil’s first experience on ice that features synchronized, freestyle and extreme skating alongside circus disciplines such as swinging trapeze, aerial straps and hand-to hand.

“Cirque du Soleil is a natural progression,” Bebe said.

He started skating at 6, competed in Vienna and gave up competitive skating at 18 to pursue professional performing. He never landed with the big tours, though.

“I was more interested in me shows, projects nobody else does, a once-in-a-lifetime experience” Bebe said. “Little things popped up here and there that don’t exist anymore. They were groundbreaking at the time.

“Cirque du Soleil is trying to do something different, outside the box.”

As soon as he heard about the Cirque’s venture onto the ice, Bebe was all in. He sent in an audition tape and was selected to join a cast of 43 artists from 22 countries.

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Passion and Drive Fueled by Community

In the creation process we laid it all out there,” Bebe said. “One thing inspires the other. You throw it all out, our creativity, all our passion and if it’s not used right away, it trickles down and inspires someone else. It’s true for the entire team.

“What amazed me every single night is the amount of talent I got to be surrounded by on stage and backstage.

“We were an entire village traveling every week from city to city. Everyone is good and talented and passionate about what they’re doing. Everyone has standards, and being surrounded by other people makes me better.”

The skaters were mostly former competitive skaters, Bebe said, and their routines included the jumps and moves skating fans are accustomed to.

“We had Olympians pulling out triple-triple combinations and flexible girls doing laybacks,” Bebe said.

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The Originality - and Fearlessness! - that Sets Zabato Bebe Apart from Most Skaters

One thing he did was tap dance on skates. Microphones were attached to his skates to pick up the sound.

The number was choreographed by Canadian skater Kurt Browning, who introduced the concept in 1994 when he first skated to “Singing in the Rain.”

He also did a back flip, which Scotty Hamilton used to do during warm ups, but is a stunt skaters were not allowed to perform in competition.

“We could do so much more with the creativity we have here: what can acrobats do on ice and what acrobatic things skaters can do,” Bebe said. “We brought those together on the ice for audiences to see something they’ve never seen before, to see something they never imagined before.”

There is some crossover between skills. Bebe, for example, says “working on two Chinese poles is just one of the craziest things I did. It’s hard to explain but I’ve never done anything like this before let alone as a figure skater.

“When they asked me to do that,” he added, “my stomach definitely turned around a few times before I agreed to do it. But after a lot of practice, I’m now totally used to it. I also got used to doing a double backflip on a very small surface of ice.”

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Performer and Choreographer

Bebe says he thoroughly enjoys performing but looked forward to the day when he was able to start doing some choreography, “both for Cirque and for their companies as well.” He was finally given this opportunity right before the pandemic cancelled everything.

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Adapting to a New World

All of this came to a screeching halt with COVID in the Winter/Spring of 2020. The Summer gave him a new opportunity to choreograph and perform in the first skating show, Phantasialand, since the pandemic hit.

Bebe also came to KrigorStudio using his background in dance, and specifically African dance, to develop a virtual AfroBeats class that allows him to share a genre that he is very passionate about, perform and choreograph.

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Why does Zabato Bebe run Virtual Classes?

“I love performing in front of people. “I love watching their astonishment as they see people do what seems to be the impossible . I also like to think maybe I’m inspiring them to think about the things they could do. The body is a tool for expressing yourself, and maybe I can convince others to think that way, too.”