About their partnership…
Marjorie: There were some big months after the Olympics that were emotionally intense but it all turned out for the best. I’m very happy with what came out of it. Marie-France is the one that approached him. They actually went out for dinner and that’s how it came up that he was interested. We did a tryout and everything felt natural and it went well. We took each other’s hand, we looked at each other, and the communication was going well. I like to say that it didn’t feel like a tryout. We connected right away and it progressed naturally from there. This was the only tryout I had to do.
We’re really aligned in our goals. For him, he wasn’t sure if he’d come back. As for me, I didn’t know what would happen with my career. Both of us are just really grateful to skate. We just want to be in the moment together and let people feel in the moment. We want to share our passion for skating and make people feel connected. Obviously, we want good results but above that we want to create something.
Jean-Luc: I missed skating as soon as I stopped. It has been great choreographing at the Ice Academy of Montreal, and working around the world. Deep down, I missed the freedom of skating, connecting with myself, and expressing emotions I don’t know how to put into words. Then there is sharing that experience with a partner is a whole new world and connecting with a whole arena… I’ve done so many things outside of skating that I was looking for that kind of pressure and that push. I've done things that I was like, oh, wow, I've really done some cool accomplishments, but something that I knew in the back of my mind is that I still had it inside of me to give back to the sport a little bit more. I didn't really know how to make that come to reality because in my last partnership, we stopped skating, and I'm not the tallest skater in the world, so there's not many opportunities for me to be able to connect with somebody. It needed to be something that made sense for me.
Marie-France just came to me in the beginning of May. I made one joke like “oh, I would even skate for that country” and she's like “You would still skate?” and then I was like yeah! Then the next day she's like we need to go grab dinner, and asked me about skating for Canada. I was like absolutely. I skated for the U.S., I'm British, I’m working on getting Canadian citizenship. So many different things. This is such an intense sport and people only really see the final product. Sometimes the final product is amazing, and sometimes it's not, but most of the time, what we do here, it's not that amazing until we can get to that final product, and to be able to endure those discomforts. Being able to communicate with somebody and find the light in the darkness is really hard to find with somebody. I mean, everyone knows how amazing Marjorie is like a little ray of sun. It's just so much fun to be able to share what I love with someone that's so emotionally intelligent and willing to explore deeper inside of themselves and also become a better skater.
Transition from training mates to partners…
Marjorie: I like the version where we skate together. He already had such a good reputation and a good personality. I knew him, but from further away. Being in his bubble, and being together, it's amazing. We get along so well, and we started to know each other very well too. He's so good at communicating. I think it's just a privilege to be a partner now.
Getting back in competition shape…
Jean-Luc: It's a journey, that's for sure. I forgot how muscles felt deep internally. I was working out quite a bit outside of the last three and a half years. I was lifting weights, I didn't ride a bike, I did walk up some stairs every day to go to bed, and that was pretty much it. In terms of cardio, it's a totally different beast but I'm learning and I'm not like being too aggressive in terms of making sure I'm in this perfect shape straight away. It's really important that I build the right foundations to make sure injury prevention is there and not that I need to look competitive right now. I mean, for me it's really important that I'm in a position to build a really strong foundation for Marjorie and I so we can do the things that we want, both competitively and artistically. And we’ll see how we can push forward from there.
How does Jean-Luc feel about competing against his fiancée (Olivia Smart)...
Jean-Luc: I love it. We've definitely had some conversations at home about it. It's going to be a process for our relationship in a great way. Everyone, even at the Olympics, People magazine was like Heated Rivalry. I was like, oh man, this is just the narrative that we live under, especially now that I'm coming back to compete. I think it's amazing. She's been my best friend for 14 years. I went to the last Olympics in 2022 with her as my best friend, and that's when I told her I loved her. I proposed to her at the last Olympics [Milano-Cortina 2026] when she competed four years later to the date that I told her that I was in love with her, and now we get to both do what we love together. Just like every relationship, it's gonna have ups and downs, and we're really willing to work through everything to get to where we are now. I think that being able to compete against her, we're gonna have so much fun. We're highly competitive ourselves, and so are they, and out there you're alone, so like I want the best for them, because I know they want the best for us. From the moment we step on the bus at that competition to go to the event or to go to practice, it's about Marjo and I, and we're in our bubble. And then we can live our lives outside of that, but it's important that we just stay connected and that we're locked in together.
Being a choreographer and, now, back to being a competitive skater at the same time…
Jean-Luc: Realistically, the hat that I'm trying to wear more of right now is the skater. I did choreography this season. For Loicia Demougeot and Theo Le Mercier who will be at NHK with us. I did choreo for Alexandr Selevko most recently. I did Marin [Honda] and Shoma [Uno]’s free dance. It's been super cool but I have a short time where I can allow my body to be locked in for this sport and I'm trying to prioritize that. Over the next couple years, I will still love to do choreography, but as of right now, hopefully and thankfully my schedule is slowing down, so we can finally put more energy into this. We started, and we've probably skated a total of like three weeks together in the last two months, but that's just because of contracts that I knew I has and that we've discussed before. In terms of choreographer, I love it. I'm super excited. It might be super weird at NHK because I'll be like, okay, I did that program, but it's fine because it's so cool. I just want to create with Marjorie and anyone else that wants to create with me. I love giving people the opportunity to be themselves through their movement on the ice.
Marjorie on attending Your True Step…
Marjorie: I learned so much. I'm very grateful, so happy. I wasn't expecting to travel this summer and it's so much fun. I had the chance and opportunity to be on the ice with everyone and watch how Jean-Luc teaches. I learned a lot from that. I was doing some dance classes with the kids, it was really fun. So that's what we did, and we also trained, of course. It was fun to just watch and be part of learning from everybody there. It was really fun.
About the golden waltz…
Jean-Luc: It's one of the compulsory dances which is probably, to be honest with you, one of the hardest ones you could be given. Quite frankly, I’m super grateful that the ISU decided to implement this because it's very hard and it exposes a lot. I mean, even for us, obviously we're a brand new team but you're gonna see teams struggle, and the problem is, with this, there's gonna be so much comparison to what Tessa and Scott did with their compulsory dance. That's the baseline. Obviously, Tessa and Scott are literally the most decorated and some of the best skaters of all time, but on top of that, their generation trained compulsories day in and day out.
From an outside perspective, from a fan's perspective, and even some of the judges that judge those compulsories will be expecting to see that. What we're judged on now is not that. We’re judged on key points and levels, and having individuality. However, they want it to be the same but different. So you're gonna see a lot of different interpretations of what the pattern can look like because it is an optional pattern. You're gonna see a lot of interpretations of the way it's skated: the leans, the rise and falls, and I think that's really cool, but I think that there will be a culture shock for the first couple months up until maybe the last Grand Prix. I’m not saying that because we're there, but I'm saying it just in general. Until people realize that everyone has a different interpretation of what this pattern can be like because of the judges and how it interacts with the program… The GOE is going to be what they want to do regardless. Last season you could see a team get a level two or level three on a PST. It changed their placement dramatically. So there's a lot of interest in how to create a higher technical standpoint on it.
I think that you're gonna see teams that don't have the time to level up or find ways to finesse it. You're going to have one side of the room be like: it needs to stay authentic, don't change the holds, don't change the pattern. The other side of the room will say: well, let's be creative, I want to see different things, let's see it flow differently. So, I think that everyone's going to be upset, and everyone's going to love it, but at the end of the day, as long as we love what we're doing, I think that's a matter's most
About competing this season
Marjorie: We're so excited about Japan [NHK Trophy] that's going to be amazing. We're really happy for the opportunity. We can't wait to create and show the world what we can do together. I think it's so fun, and we feel very lucky and grateful that we can compete internationally the first year that we’re together.
[Does that affect your pacing of training this summer at all?]
Jean-Luc: No. We have two choices. We can either freak out and be like, “I haven't competed in three and a half years" or we can acknowledge that I haven't competed in three and a half years. It's gonna take some time for us to get to that point. By the time we get to NHK, will we be the best? Maybe we don't know, but that's so far away for us to be looking. Our plan is to be ready for that event. This is a four year cycle that we're working under and we want to be able to grow and push ice dance in Canada. We want to keep it on the top of the world stage over the next four years, so we know that's not a right now kind of thing. We need to grow progressively.
Programs…
Marjorie: I like to say that for the rhythm dance, we want people to be able to have fun with us. We want to connect together, but also with the crowd, and we want people to dance while sitting there and just to have fun. For the free, we want them to go into our world. We connect together and it’'s just us on the ice. We create a moment where they're just watching.
Goals…
Marjorie: Short term, we want to be smart. We're getting back in shape. We want to prevent injury and just feel comfortable with each other.
Jean-Luc: We definitely want to win the National Championships this year. That's what's on our paper. In terms of short term goals, we don't really know. I don't know how short term is like… Like I want to get through the rest of today! In terms of foundational things, we definitely want to win the Canadian National Championships this year. We would love to be on a Four Continents podium. It would be insane but we need to reach for it. We want to be in the top eight at Worlds because we really want to give ourselves the opportunity, and also other athletes, for the future. We want to keep the opportunity for teams to compete at a high level in ice dance. We have some amazing teams. What we can do is just focus on the rebuild of me coming back to competitive skating, creating moments together, and then trying to keep Canadian ice dance on the map.