Partnering up together
Alicia: Basically, it was Marie France that messaged us separately, and she was like, "You guys need to skate together”. One day, they kind of organized a mix and match at the rink, and all the single skaters were kind of switching and skating together. Marko was there.
Marko: Have you guys heard of a mix and match today? It was a thing when everyone split because they happened suddenly where everybody split. We had five girls and five guys…
Alicia: I think we were seven girls and five guys. The guys were busy!
Marko: Something like that. Yeah, we were switching partners every one minute.
Alicia: We would do an exercise five times differently to try out with everybody.
Marko: It was the first time we had a tryout on this type of thingy. It worked pretty well with Alicia. We arranged the tryout the same week— end of the same week, and since then it was just like, boom, it worked!
Alicia: We’re not going to let go of each other.
Marko: It worked. Yeah! It was something like that. Before Alicia, I had a couple tryouts here and there but nothing really worked. I had a tryout in France, and then I went to the U.S. for one tryout, and pretty much yeah. I was still very open for any other tryouts. But with Alicia, it worked so well, like everything. The match, the character, like what we have was just magical.
About Alicia’s last partnership
Alicia: It was not my decision. It kind of happened suddenly for me... I mean, I was hearing about it here and there from people at the rink, and then it got to me at some point. It was pretty hard but I think we knew that the partnership was better off alone. We were two very different people, our communication was not the best, and working together was hard sometimes. I think at that time I was struggling just because I thought I wouldn't find someone. I knew there were a lot of splits happening but there was nobody that I really saw myself skating with. I'm tall for an ice dancers so it's hard to find a tall guy. For me, that was what was hard. I wasn’t sure I was going to find someone. I kind of accepted the fact that maybe I wouldn't compete this season and that I would take time to work on my own skating. But then he showed up! He showed up two weeks after, and then it went pretty fast. It's super nice. We're two really similar people in the way we work and in the way we are generally. It makes understanding each other really easy, and communicating is amazing so far. Of course, it's new, but I think after all the experience we both had in previous partnership and restarting a new one, at this time in our life, I think I'm very grateful for that. We have so many lessons that we learned on both sides and we really want to take care of that relationship, and we know how to do it.
Any challenges so far?
Marko: I think figure skating is pretty challenging by itself. Like waking up at 5 a.m. is pretty challenging to me! But no, of course we face challenges every day. But we found this way of communicating, and we're both trying to be adults and grown up. We're trying to manage this supportive and very caring atmosphere we have between each other so that really helps. Sometimes she sees me struggle where there are days when it's harder than others, and then she's just being rock solid. It helps me out of this state and on the ice especially. I think that what really helps us maintain this healthy relationship on the ice. It’s what we really really really adore. It's beautiful. I'm very grateful for what we have right now.
Competing for Canada instead of Estonia
Marko: We put some pros and cons together. Estonia is very very close to my heart, and I really love my country. Skating for Estonia would mean a lot to me but skating for Canada is also something I wanted to experience because we have a good field of ice dancers in Canada right now. It's going to push us to get better because competition is very high. I feel like this sparks a fire inside us even more. In Estonia, there would be no one except us. We would be national champions straight away. It would open doors everywhere, which is great and it's amazing where we would compete everywhere. But at the same time, I think it's way more rewarding to achieve it for Canada. Our plan is eight years, so I think in eight years there is a lot that will happen. A lot of new stuff. We're gonna try to show better results every year. We want to build something beautiful, not only for us but also for the future of Canada. We want to sustain this ice dance field and keep it highly competitive.
Alicia: There were a lot of thoughts into it. We both represented our own country. Obviously, I was super attached to Canada. I have been representing Canada for 10 years internationally. It’s the same thing for him. That's all we knew. But I think we were really good. We want to skate together. We want to make this work. What is the best for our career? We put the pros and cons.
Marko: It ended up Canada being a little better.
Alicia: There are definitely a lot of people in Canada but we're two competitors, and I think we really want to fight first. It pushes us at training which is nice.
Goals?
Marko: Long term goal, of course, is going to the Olympic Games. We're not talking about results right now. It's been 10 weeks. We're skating together and we're going with the flow. Everything so far works pretty well. Like we said, our communication is great. Our programs are looking good. I think we're happy with our choices we made so far towards everything we did. We're gonna see where we're gonna go. We have a competition in four and a half weeks [Championnats québécois d’été]. We're going to show what we achieved in these three months of practicing together. Hopefully it's good. Maybe not. We don't know! We'll see. But I think it's growth that matters. We'll receive feedback and move from there. Right now, I don't think further than these next four weeks.
Alicia: For this season, we feel ready. Our programs work well and it went really fast. Everything was working amazingly. We want to show the potential that we have at Summer Provincials, and hopefully be able to compete internationally this season. We would love to go to Worlds for Canada this year so we're gonna do everything we can on the ice. We control the way we skate and we’re just going to do our job.
Programs
Marko: We did both programs with Marie France, and we have the help of Sam Chouinard. We work with pretty much every coach so they all have some sort of impact on the programs. That's in general how our school [IAM] works. Everybody is trying to help, and we take some stuff from this coach, sometimes from this other coach.
Marko: For rhythm dance, we're going with Billie Eilish. There's a mix of songs.
Alicia: There are quite a few in there. It's interesting. I think it shows our characters. There's like a great relationship and we're kind of like playing on that.
Marko: We both enjoy the music. Yeah, we both like Billie Eilish [Note: Marko pronounced it as Billie Eyelash].
Alicia: We both didn't want to do classical waltz.
Marko: Well, I would do masquerade, but Marie-France [Dubreuil] said no. But we went with Billie Eilish because we both enjoy her music. I don't listen to her that much, but I do enjoy her music! We felt the need to add some hip hop into the season because I'm sure there will be a lot of similar ideas throughout the season because there are so many couples nowadays. Adding some hip hop into it, I think that's an interesting choice and we went with that. And for the free dance, we got Caught Out In The Rain.
Alicia: It’s a great free dance to show the connection that we have. We're kind of building a storyline around it and it's been amazing. It's super powerful,
Marko: It's like a Jazzy Soul, Beth Hart type stuff.
Alicia: It brings out the best of our skating, so we're really excited for that!