by Jacquelyn Thayer
Entry to the senior ranks proved a trial by fire for Canadian ice dancers and 2014 World Junior bronze medalists Madeline Edwards and ZhaoKai Pang. While still competing as juniors internationally, their 2013 national title meant a move up to the elite ranks for this year’s Olympic-qualifier Canadian championships.
And for the team who train under coaches Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe at the Vancouver Ice Dance Academy, the transition was made bumpier by ill-timed injury: Edwards struggled with Achilles tendonitis in the weeks preceding Nationals, limiting training time to as little as ten to twenty minutes a day.
Edwards and Pang after the free dance at the 2014 Canadian Tire Figure Skating Championships. Photo by Danielle Earl.
“It was a hard one, because I couldn’t be in my skates, and it was difficult to do some off-ice things,” she says. “But we made sure that we were spending time together and we were doing things off-ice that we could do. Lots of visualization and talking through everything. And I think it was just important that we stayed connected through that so that when I could slowly come back on the ice, there wasn’t a disconnect between us or between the coaches.”
The work they could continue included a focus on certain lifts, while Edwards worked to maintain her fitness and cardio levels in preparation for a return to full training.
“We’d set little goals for the day and depending on how I was feeling,” she continues. “Like if I told ZhaoKai ‘Look, I could barely walk down the stairs this morning, maybe we just need to sit down and listen to the music and just talk about the programs.’”
And Pang saw opportunities in his solo time on the ice.
“I really didn’t mind, because I’m not a perfect skater,” he says. “I know that I have a lot to improve on on my own, so I saw it as: I would’ve liked it a lot more if we could train normally, but I definitely knew that I had some of my own stuff to work on. So knowing that, I was never discouraged or anything. I knew that she was giving it all that she could and I was, too.”
And while Edwards notes that she never missed a day at the rink, her restricted schedule encouraged Pang to set some personal milestones.
“Just really a lot of basic skating skills,” he says of his focuses. “Extension, turnout, trying to get speed. One of my goals was, if she had to miss a week of practice, when she comes back I want her to notice that I’m a better skater.”
But mid-season struggles gave way to late season emergence in a few capacities. Their debut as seniors at Nationals came as several more established teams battled for a spot to the Sochi Olympics.
“It was really, really cool—especially during an Olympic year—to watch,” says Pang. “I think everybody kind of stepped up their game and trained with a lot of intensity to try to make the Olympic team. I mean, we got to share the competition with Tessa [Virtue] and Scott [Moir], so that’s pretty cool.”
And while the couple placed seventh in the tough field, the experience only bolstered their efforts in shifting focus to the World Junior Figure Skating Championships.
“The year before, we went to Junior Worlds and kind of had a disappointing performance,” says Pang of a twelfth-place outing which included two falls in the free dance. “But what our coach Aaron said to us—really trust our training and trust in the process of going there and just skating our best on every practice and on every warm-up, and then on our actual performances.”
The result was a jump to the podium, with the team winning bronze and setting ISU personal bests in every category. Now as the two turn their focus to the new season, which will begin in a few weeks with a fourth appearance at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships, they aim to build on last season’s movement.
“We’d love to make National Team for senior,” says Pang. “And junior, we aim to be at least on the podium for Junior Worlds and try to make the Junior Grand Prix Final this year.”
“Our first year we were second alternates, this year we were alternates, so let’s hope that continues,” laughs Edwards.
And to elevate their international status, the team knows there’s room to grow.
“I think, especially watching the Olympics, that something we could work on would be sort of that big presence,” says Edwards. “Not physically big, but just taking up space on the ice and sort of having that presence that makes people want to watch you.”
“We want to this year really establish ourselves as a senior team, or a very, very top-level junior team, so we want to have that maturity, that kind of poise that a lot of the Canadian senior teams have,” says Pang. “We want to be able to get onto the ice and have everybody really watch us, so having the confidence to be able to handle all these eyes watching us and to really rise to the occasion in that way.”
Complicating the task is the intense schedule that comes of training at two levels. While last year’s junior and senior short dances had their foundation in similar rhythms, if quite different patterns–the Quickstep and the more complex Finnstep–this season will mean preparing a Latin short dance based around the Silver Samba pattern for junior events and a Spanish Paso Doble short dance for Nationals. The team is working with ballroom instructors for both rhythms, though a focus on the samba takes immediate precedence.
“Now that we have that experience in junior and in senior, we’re going to be able to make it work, I think,” says Edwards. “We really enjoy both dances, so I think that helps. And we have done the paso before—we competed the paso in novice.”
Preparing not only two short dances, but two versions of a free dance catering to the requirements at each level, demands careful attention to schedule.
“The seasons overlap a little bit, but we have plans, like yearly plans and daily plans,” says Pang. “So we have to kind of be methodical about how we tackle choreography, tackle training. Once we start the Junior Grand Prix season, we’ll obviously work more on junior, and after that we’ll switch off to senior. So I think that’s the main thing, is kind of being organized and not leaving it like, ‘Oh, we’re competing in a week…’”
Both partners express their excitement about their free dance, a more romantic piece incorporating Life is Beautiful and a few additional music selections.
“It took us, I think, longer than it ever has to find music, because we just wanted something that was us and that we really connected to,” says Edwards. “We heard, like, hundreds of beautiful pieces of music and we just looked at Aaron and Megan and they’d just say ‘I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it.’ So we wanted to make sure that it was something that played up our strengths but also pushed us and pushed the maturity.”
The method was typical of the team’s usual comprehensive approach, notes Edwards. “We, at the beginning of the year, sort of have an idea of what kind of genres we’re looking at,” she says. “And then we’ll all bring in stuff. We’ll all bring in our iPods and sort of try everything out—we never shoot something down right away.”
And the team is open-minded about future possibilities, including, as Pang quips, “dubstep.”
Edwards and Pang during the short dance at the 2014 Canadian Tire Figure Skating Championships. Photo by Danielle Earl.
“Even this year, I know we put a couple of pieces aside and said, you know, I don’t think we’re ready for this yet, but I think that would be a beautiful program in the future. There’s even pieces of music that Aaron stops and says, ‘You know, this is an Olympic year program, we’re going to save that one,’” laughs Edwards.
The learning process continues to include drawing from those who’ve led the way in the sport. Edwards is partial to teams who demonstrate, in her words, “a really good understanding of the smoothness of skating style and sort of expression of movement,” citing current top teams like Virtue and Moir and Meryl Davis and Charlie White, also admired by Pang. Coaches Wing and Lowe, however, have also ensured the team’s exposure to past Canadian greats including Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz and Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon.
“To be honest, before I started ice dance, I never really watched ice dance,” says Pang. “I didn’t really know anybody. But as I kind of got into it, our coaches were like ‘Oh, go watch these guys.’ ‘Oh, okay, they’re cool.’”
Occasionally, the lesson can come in live form, too.
“And honestly, it’s a little cheesy,” he adds, “but Megan and Aaron—watching them, they’ll skate something out just as an example of what we should do, and we’re like ‘Oh, that was pretty sweet.’”
Drawing inspiration from such long-term teams seems especially pertinent for Edwards and Pang, who highlight the strengths that have come of a partnership that has so far spanned seven years.
“I think for me and ZhaoKai, something that we’ve been lucky to have from the very beginning, from juvenile, is that we really get along really well, and we have a good connection,” says Edwards. “So we want to make sure that everyone else can sort of feel our story and feel, I guess, our connection together, and make that clear in the program, that it’s something that can sort of resonate with the audience.”
“I think we’ve always kind of gotten along with each other, just in practice,” agrees Pang. “We kind of know what the other person wants, and I think that’s one thing that we’re good at.”
The partnership, too, fosters each’s enjoyment of ice dance in itself.
“I think the fact that the sport has grown so much artistically and athletically—it sort of is a discipline that has something for everyone,” says Edwards. “For myself personally, I really enjoy being able to skate with someone and tell a story and have that connection. So that’s something everyone can enjoy, too.”
“I’m not sure if I could be a singles skater and skate a four-hour session on my own,” adds Pang. “I’ve always liked the performance aspect of skating, and I guess I’ve grown to like having somebody out there with me. The training sessions are long. But it doesn’t feel as long doing ice dance compared to stroking around and just going after jumps over and over.”
Edwards, too, knows the benefit of company.
“ZhaoKai is always there and ready to work, but he’s always able to make me laugh too,” she says. “So he’s always putting in 100 percent, and we both expect that from each other, but we also get along really well.”
“I don’t really talk that much on the ice,” says Pang, “but she’ll have stories and stuff and I’ll be like ‘All right.’ So it’s pretty fun to skate with her, I think. It’s never tedious to go to the rink and be like ‘Oh God, I have to see that girl again,’” he laughs.
Away from the rink, the two are both focused on academic efforts. Edwards, who recently graduated from secondary school, will be entering university study with an eye towards general sciences. Pang, a full-time student at Simon Fraser University, is currently undeclared but leaning towards general sciences with an interest in kinesiology.
And each favor some additional creative outlets beyond the ice: Edwards enjoys cooking and baking; Pang plays guitar and piano while dabbling in some songwriting–a musical inclination that’s proven useful as a skater.
“Especially in ice dance, because it’s so focused on dancing to the music and placing elements to the music,” he says. “So I think it has helped me to hear nuances in the music better. So yeah, I’m pretty grateful my mom put me into piano lessons.”
And what the team may be most grateful for moving forward are the lessons received in the eventful few months surrounding Nationals and Junior Worlds, making the push through injury, as Edwards says, “worth it.”
“[Nationals] was the one competition that sort of changed our mentality of how we skated, and we were really able to reflect on it, because we had one of our best skates, and it was just us going out and skating for enjoyment and not worrying about results or worrying about scores,” she says.
“Obviously we’re focusing on the job that we needed to do, but I think really just going out and being relaxed and enjoying the experience, taking it all in, was something that we were then able to just go to Junior Worlds and say ‘Hey, let’s do that again. Just skate for us.’ And it worked for us, and I think that’s something that we’re going to carry into this season as well.”