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Articolo da International Figure Skating
Marie-France Dubreuil & Patrice Lauzon
Dancing in a New Direction
For more than a decade, Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon enjoyed success on the international ice dance stage.
But long before they ended their competitive career in 2008, the duo had a dream to create an elite training center in Canada. Shortly after retiring from the professional circuit, they fulfilled that dream — and while it was not the immediate success that they had hoped for, it has now become a magnet for elite ice dancers from all over the world.
The concrete jungle of Montréal’s Saint-Henri neighborhood is a gradually gentrifying area of low-rent apartment buildings and corner stores that compete for space with a growing number of up-scale patisseries and trendy bistros. The area seems more suited to a boxing gym than a world-class ice dance facility.
But Dubreuil and Lauzon decided that the Centre récréatif Gadbois was the perfect place to establish a school that would be dedicated to advancing the discipline of ice dance. During their competitive career, the duo represented the CPA Gadbois club.
“Here, we had an opportunity with the City of Montréal through connections,” Dubreuil said. “There used to be a training center for pairs here, but the coaches went elsewhere, so we had the chance to use this rink.”
During Dubreuil and Lauzon’s competitive era there were no schools for elite ice dancers in Canada. “We had to move to France to train at a high level, and, especially for me, I was shocked and angry to have to leave Montréal, to leave Québec, to leave Canada to go train somewhere else,” Lauzon recalled.
“We live in a city where there are thousands of rinks. Ice skating is one of our national sports. To have to go somewhere else to train in one of our national sports — that made no sense for me. If young teams decide to train abroad, that’s their choice, but we want them to at least have the possibility to stay here.”
Building Momentum
A number of teams from Europe and the United States now call the training center home, but that evolution did not happen overnight.
“At the beginning, I thought we would have a lot of teams coming, but that wasn’t the case,” Lauzon said. “Then, later, when it began to take off, I didn’t think it would take off that quickly.”
Spain’s Sara Hurtado and Adrià Díaz moved to Montréal in December 2011 to train with Dubreuil and Lauzon, and Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen, who represent Denmark, arrived in 2012.
“As Canadians, we were surprised to see that our popularity as coaches was more in Europe,” Dubreuil said. “We had more couples from Europe come here than couples from Montréal who want to train at home. Once you reach a certain level, only a few coaches have the required credentials, so people are obliged to go to the bigger centers.”
Lauzon said that, in Europe, coaches are paid by the federations rather than by skaters, and the ice is managed by local government to ensure that everything functions correctly. “Here, we’re trying to create a mix between the system used in Canada and the United States and the European system. We have a partnership with an organization called RÉPAM and the City of Montréal.”
RÉPAM coordinates ice time and coaching for young skaters who are enrolled in sports programs at their high schools. “That allows us to provide a lot of other things in conjunction with our on-ice training,” Dubreuil explained.
The coaching staff grew to three with the addition of former Canadian ice dance competitor Pascal Denis. Romain Haguenauer joined the team in the summer of 2014.
“Romain coached us, so to have him here coaching with us, I feel like we’ve come full circle,” Dubreuil said. “He has 20 years of coaching experience that we haven’t got, but we have more experience as competitors and show skaters. Romain has a European style, and I think that the mix between the technique and style is very interesting.”
At the end of last season, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue and Alexandra Paul and Mitchell Islam left their Detroit training base and moved to Montréal to work full time with the talented coaching team.
Riding the Wave
Two young Canadian teams, Élisabeth Paradis and François-Xavier Ouellette and Carolane Soucisse and Simon Tanguay, have been reaping the benefits of the training environment at Gadbois. “They are making phenomenal progress by having the chance to train with couples from abroad that are really world-class. Watching the top skaters and seeing how hard they train each day has had a positive influence on them,” said Dubreuil, adding that they were im- patient to get some Canadian teams out on the circuit.
One of the biggest surprises last season was the success that Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron found on the global stages.
“When the results started coming in and people started to talk, we said, ‘Now we’ll see if they are true champions,’” Dubreuil recalled.
“Being a champion is something you have to assume; you have to be able to take the pressure. When they won the Cup of China ahead of the reigning World champions (Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte), that was the first big surprise. But they came back here and started training as if nothing special had happened.
“When they came here last June, they were 13th in the world. We knew we could do something good with them, and, one session after another, we saw they were improving very quickly. They are very coachable, and they have a superb working relationship. We were not expecting them to become World champions this year, that’s for sure.
“I think training in another country helps them. Here, they are anonymous — unknowns. So they can stay focused on their work, and that’s what they did all last season. We haven’t seen them since Shanghai; they left for the World Team Trophy and then went on tour, so we’ll see how they do now that they have the World title.
“But at the victory party with the French team in Shanghai, Gabriella told me, ‘All I want to do is go back to Montréal and start training again.’ I think that’s how she grounds herself.”
Papadakis and Cizeron are not the only team that made a quantum leap last season. Hurtado and Díaz danced into fifth at the European Championships, and Beaudry and Sorensen rose from 28th in 2014 to 11th in the world this year.
“I was going to say the Danes are an underrated team to watch out for, but now that they are 11th in the world I can’t really say that anymore,” Lauzon said.
Satisfying Careers
After a whirlwind year of accompanying their students to competitions around the world, Dubreuil and Lauzon, who claimed two World silver medals and five Canadian titles during their career, said they do not miss the competitive life.
“We are happy. I think it’s fun that we are able to have a second career — or a third one, even,” Dubreuil said. “We had a competitive career, a career as show skaters and now we are coaches and choreographers. We keep growing through what our young skaters are doing.
“There are moments when nostalgia tugs at my heartstrings a bit. When we went to Skate Canada for the first time as coaches and the Skate Canada theme music started to play, I got butterflies. I thought, ‘Now, I would compete if I could.’”
Dubreuil said one of her career highlights was winning the free dance at the 2006 World Championships and capturing the silver medal. “After the fall at the Olympics and going through three weeks of hell after Torino, it was a highlight for a lot of reasons,” she said. “How we got through that — me as an individual and us as a team — is a great comeback story.
“It was the most deserved medal we ever got — that and our first Canadian title. You never forget when you become the best in your country and the leader of your sport in your country. They were very proud moments for me.”
Lauzon said he misses the feeling of performing — but not competing — at a high level “because I know all about the hard work and time that goes into it.”
As well as juggling their busy coaching and traveling schedules Dubreuil and Lauzon are raising their 4-year-old daughter, Billie-Rose. “When you try to balance everything, it becomes a source of stress, so we just try to do what makes us happy and do the things that need to be done and include our daughter,” Dubreuil said.
“When I’m looking for music, Billie-Rose likes to listen to the music and dance around with me. She’s always suggesting moves. She’s been skating a few times. She wobbles around the rink. Maybe I’m going to have her take classes, but I think she might be more into dance or theatre or music. She’s already a great actress.”
Elevating Ice Dance
Dubreuil and Lauzon are committed to continuing the development of their world-class training facility and to move the sport in a different direction. “Our goals are less for our own school and more for ice dance in general,” Lauzon explained. “We want to bring back the status that ice dance had in the 1980s and 1990s, where there was a lot more originality in ice dance.”
With fewer elements to execute, teams had more time to focus on conceptual choreography and innovation, Dubreuil said. “I think we’ve been able to do that with Gabriella and Guillaume and even with Sara and Adrià. We have been able to add a bit more context, storytelling and art to the discipline of ice dance.
The coaching quad at Gadbois is focused on ensuring that each of the teams receives well-rounded training while maintaining their own distinct style. “We are like artists. Every time an artist does a painting, people will know it’s the work of that artist, but the paintings can’t all look alike. We want each couple to keep their own colors and their own textures,” said Dubreuil. “All of the teams have something of us
in them; they remind us of us a little, but we really try to bring out their individuality. We don’t want them to start to look like each other.
“We work with ballroom dance trainers, theater teachers and all sorts of people who complement our team. On the ice, Patrice is the technical mastermind who picks everything apart.”
Lauzon said any one of the four could be the head coach. “I can do technical aspects, but I can also choreograph. Marie-France is more focused on choreography, but she does technical work as well. Each of us has our specialty.
“It’s cyclical in dance; schools become popular at certain times. The school where we trained in Lyon was considered the best in the world for 10 years or so, but now there are fewer people there. Then everyone was going to Detroit, and now our school has started to work well. We are trying to find the secret formula so that continues.”
By RUBY PRATKA/SUSAN D. RUSSELL
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