Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

With five minutes of fury, Skating Aratas wheel to fame on ‘I Can Do That’

Jenny Arata-Victor Arata-NBC-‘I Can Do That’

NBC

Jenny and Victor Arata on NBC’s “I Can Do That.”

The Kats Report Podcast

The Skating Aratas

John Katsilometes and Tricia McCrone talk to husband and wife duo Victor and Jenny Arata, the "Skating Aratas" in “V – The Ultimate Variety Show” at Planet Hollywood. Currently they're competing on NBC's "I Can Do That."

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The Skating Aratas at V Theater.

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Victor and Jenny Arata, better known as The Skating Aratas, shown at V Theater in Miracle Mile Shops of Planet Hollywood.

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The Skating Aratas from "V — The Ultimate Variety Show" performs during the 27th Annual Aid for AIDS of Nevada Black & White Party at the Joint on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, in the Hard Rock Hotel.

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Victor and Jenny Arata, better known as The Skating Aratas, shown at V Theater in Miracle Mile Shops of Planet Hollywood.

The Skating Aratas perform an act in which they spin at high velocity, as fast as 60 mph, on a platform no larger than a kitchen table — if that kitchen table’s diameter is 6 feet.

In this act, Victor spins his wife, Jenny, with a leather strap that is at one point fashioned as a noose around his partner’s neck so he can spin her with his hands free. She corkscrews for several rotations as the audience alternately gasps and cheers. The act has been known to draw multiple standing ovations in just five minutes.

There also is a segment in the routine known as “The Headbanger,” where Victor dips Jenny during one of these high-speed spins so her head nearly brushes the stage. She sinks rapidly to just an inch above the hard surface, and the act’s name is exactly what you do not want to see happen. Sort of like naming an act “My Partner Passes Out and Spins Into the Audience,” which is one of the many risks in the Aratas’ dizzying and dazzling performances.

Thus, The Skating Aratas’ act is not at all the type you would watch and say, “I Can Do That.”

But Joe Jonas and Nicole Scherzinger, famous for many reasons that have nothing to do with a death-defying roller-skating act, are saying they can do that. The founding member of The Jonas Brothers and onetime singer for The Pussycat Dolls have chosen the Skating Aratas’ act as their challenge in the NBC series “I Can Do That.”

We’ll find out Tuesday how they fared. The show airs at 10 p.m. on KSNV Channel 3, and The Aratas — featured in “V — The Ultimate Variety Show” at Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood — are spinning at the center of this week’s episode.

“Joe and Nicole are unique people — they are not any average Joes,” Victor Arata said with a laugh during a recent interview (the couple also were guests on Friday’s edition of “Kats With the Dish”). “This is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”

A little about the format for “I Can Do That”: The series seems like a contest show but is not quite that. Each week, six celebs showcase their talent and nerve by pairing with unusual acts and performers. Recording artist Ciara, Cheryl Burke of “Dancing With the Stars,” Jeff Dye of “Last Comic Standing” and Alan Ritchson of “The Hunger Games” join Jonas and Scherzinger as the celeb cast members. The show’s host is comic actor Marlon Wayans. Along the way, such Las Vegas performers as Penn & Teller, Blue Man Group, Jabbawockeez and The Quiddlers (also of the “V” show) have been paired with the assorted celebs.

What sets The Aratas apart is that there are very few acrobatic performers anywhere who can perform this skating routine. It’s far more athletically challenging than, say, mastering the operation of a puppet in “Avenue Q.” When The Aratas initially were approached about contributing to the show, Victor’s instant and even involuntary response was, “No way.”

“We had a lot of talking to do,” Victor said. “On our way in, we told them, ‘We don’t know if we can do it.’ We said, ‘We’re going to go for it, but we’re going to wing it.'”

There is good reason behind The Aratas’ trepidation. It took the couple several years of intensive practice to learn the act that debuted in “Absinthe” in 2011 before the tandem were soon snapped up by producer David Saxe in “V” that year. They had a week to train the two celebs, a process that will be chronicled in Tuesday’s show before the newbies perform their own version of the act in front of a live audience.

“There is no school for what we do,” Victor said. “It is so vaudeville. There is no blueprint to follow, and we are not interested in starting a teaching school to train people to do this. We do it our own way.”

As Jenny remembers the earliest training sessions, “We wore helmets and full equipment. … It was about trust, building trust, for us to do this.”

At first, Scherzinger professed not to be able to skate at all. But she did allow that she had some experience on wheels, just not nearly as extensive as Jonas. As it turns out, Jonas’ father, Paul Kevin Jonas Sr., was a disco roller-skating champion in the 1980s (which would be a contest challenge of an entirely different variety). Consequently, Jonas did come with a lot of time on skates.

“We played the father card a lot with him,” Victor said. “We were like, ‘Your father would be so proud!’”

The chief concern was training a couple to perform as its own entity rather than using one of The Aratas in the act to be broadcast. Victor initially felt he would serve as the “base” of the act and spin his female counterpart, Scherzinger.

That meant individual training by Jenny for Scherzinger and by Victor for Jonas. “At first I was saying, ‘I can train with one girl or even two girls,’ talking about me lifting someone," Victor said. "But they wanted us to train an entire act, which is far more challenging.”

There also is the matter of a cutting of the act from five minutes down to two minutes. The editing of the act is not as easy as it seems, as The Aratas perform a set five-minute piece that is tightly choreographed.

“We don't have a lot of room to cut because we need to reach a certain speed and we need to come out of the act, which takes a required amount of time,” Victor said. “It’s not what’s called an ‘agency act’ that can be performed at any length.” That is the chief reason The Aratas have never agreed to be on “America’s Got Talent” despite repeated overtures from that show. The act is what it is, impressive each time out, but would require ample time and resources to develop for a different interpretation over many weeks.

“It’s simple and beautiful,” Jenny added. “But it is very hard to change, and it is hard to teach. We just haven’t taught it.”

The two refuse to disclose what sorts of injuries might have been suffered during the weeklong training. That will be disclosed during the show. But the couple is insistent that the risk shown on the show is real.

“Our best friends and worst enemies were the safety crew at NBC,” Victor said. “It was always, ‘It’s too crazy! We can’t do this!’ But we did find a way to do this.”

“Let me tell you something,” Victor continued. “When this show is over, Jenny and I looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t think we’ll ever do it again.'“

“It was too much pressure,” Jenny added.

“We said, ‘If nothing goes wrong, by chance, it’ll be a miracle,'” Victor said. “If everything goes right, it’s still a miracle.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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