Coach Mark’s Offerings
Mark works with students of all levels and ages, with a specialty in advanced skating skills and partnered ice dance, but his experience as a National competitor, choreographer, and coach includes Singles, Pairs, Partnered Ice Dance, Solo Ice Dance, Theatre on Ice, show skating, and more.
Primary Coaching for All Disciplines
Primary Coaches, also known as “head coaches,” serve as the leaders of a skater’s coaching team. In addition to providing on-ice instruction, primary coaches often assume a managerial role, coordinating a skater’s career, including managing other coaches on the team, developing training plans and season-level strategies, and fulfilling various other responsibilities.
Coach Mark offers primary coaching in all major disciplines of the sport, and his students have competed at regional, sectional, and national finals. His freestyle technique is classical and grounded in his ballet training, while in ice dancing he specializes in the Brown-Lescinski-Cullinan Method (also known as Balletics), and trained extensively in the British, Russian, and American schools.
As a skater progresses, consistency of instruction becomes extremely important to a skater’s ongoing development and safety, and as such, a primary coach is recommended for skaters once they complete Learn To Skate.
Secondary Coaching
Secondary coaches work with skaters on specialized subsets of their skating. Most singles skaters have a secondary coach for skating skills, and many also work with jump and spin specialists, among others. Ice dancers may work with a Pairs coach on lifts, a specialist for pattern dances, and off-ice professionals in ballroom among others.
Coach Mark is an expert in advanced skating technique and skating skills development, as well as partnering and lifting for pairs and dance. In addition to these areas, Coach Mark also works with skaters on footwork, transitions, applied skating skills (for jumping and spinning), power skating, packaging, and ice dance for singles, pairs, and synchro skaters. His students have passed Gold tests in Skating Skills, Singles, Partnered Pattern Dance, and Partnered Free Dance.
When working with a secondary coach, clear delegation of coaching responsibilities is crucial for success. Skaters must obtain the prior written approval of their primary coach before working with any secondary coach.
Partnering for Ice Dance, Pairs, and Adagio
Test Partners (sometimes called “test props”) are coaches who serve as a practice and testing partner for their students. If a skater doesn’t have a long-term skating partner, they can take tests with a coach qualified as a test partner. Test Partners maintain a high level of fitness outside of scheduled lessons to offer this type of coaching.
Coach Mark offers the widest range of Standard and Adult Track test partnering in the Pacific Northwest, including:
1. All Partnered Pattern Dance tests (incl. Gold and International)
2. All Partnered Free Dance tests (including Gold)
3. Preliminary and Bronze Pairs tests
High-level Pattern Dance, all Free Dance, and all Pairs testing require a significant commitment of time and resources from both the skater and Coach Mark, and additional fees may apply. Please reach out to Coach Mark for more information.
Choreography, Music Selection, and Interpretation
Choreography is the fabric that empowers a skater to connect with their audience. Coach Mark is a National-level choreographer, and has been creating for the ice for over 20 years for singles, pairs, ice dance, solo dance, and adagio.
Creating a program is a collaborative process that starts with the generation of a concept, arrangement and/or editing of music, layout of elements on the ice surface, creation of the linking steps between them, and the ongoing packaging and polishing of a skater’s work over the course of a season. Coach Mark is deeply experienced in all aspects of this process, and also brings a background and training in classical ballet, Argentine tango de salon, classical music, and reverence for figure skating history to his work.
In addition to end-to-end program creation, Coach Mark offers music selection, music editing, section choreography, and interpretation coaching for all disciplines à la carte; please reach out for more information.
Short-Term Coaching and Seminars
Short-Term Coaching encompasses the diverse range of time-bound or scope-bound projects undertaken by coaches with students. These projects may include technical deep-dives, seminars, footwork refinements, interpretation coaching for programs, collaboration with visiting skaters, or travel to work with students outside the coach’s home rink.
Coach Mark consistently engages with individual skaters and teams on a short-term basis to address specific, scoped projects. Additionally, Coach Mark offers ad-hoc coaching to skaters with unconventional and/or irregular schedules that conflict with a traditional weekly lesson schedule.
Coach Mark also regularly travels to facilitate seminars, camps, and “stroking jail” technique intensives for skaters and coaches, including short-term residencies. To inquire about short-term coaching for an individual skater or team, click here. For inquiries about seminars, camps, and residencies, please click here.