You Don’t Know Alysa Liu’s Power Until You See It In Person

ANAHEIM, Calif. — There is no fandom quite like the fandom of teenage girls. It is powerful and pure, untainted by the burdensome knowledge of adulthood while burning with an intensity that feels beyond human comprehension. That's why the screaming for Alysa Liu sounds the way it does, and why it starts immediately, the moment her thousands of fans believe she is about to head out on the ice. They have come here to cheer, to cry, to sing along with the lyrics to the songs she skates to. They are prepared for this moment in a way that adults cannot really be prepared for anything. But also, in a more basic sense, they are prepared ; I am thinking here of the two young people I heard behind me in line for the bathroom, who spent part of the wait time discussing what they would do when the reigning Olympic gold medalist came out and performed her viral "Stateside" skate.

We are here, at the Southern California tour stop of the Stars On Ice show, for all the figure skaters, of course—for "Quad God" Ilia Malinin, for U.S. champions Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito, for Olympians Evan Bates, Madison Chock, Danny O'Shea, and Ellie Kam. All get heavy rounds of applause and calls from the crowd of "We love you!" But there's no denying that there is one skater for whom the audience got and stayed the loudest, for whom the most phones go up in the air. Liu is still in college, but there's no age minimum for being a pop star. The 20-year-old from Oakland is inarguably one of those now.

At this tour stop, the show starts late because it's up against the most recent installment of the Dodgers/Angels non-rivalry. That game is happening across the street as I arrive, making traffic around the arena even worse than the usual woeful Orange County standard. But by the time the lights go down, the stands are packed; Shohei Ohtani played to a sold-out house, too, but these stars come to town much less often. Our show opened with a group number to a brooding piece of music called "Brink of Annihilation/Fearless"—followed by skates from Andrew Torgashev (to Bradley Cooper's "Out of Time" from A Star Is Born), Levito (living her best ice princess life, skating to Madonna's "Material Girl"), and ice dancers Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko (a super-fun medley of Nelly Furtado's "Say It Right" and "Maneater"). All earned huge responses from the crowd.