Jobs in Figure Skating... | Golden Skate

Jobs in Figure Skating...

Longhornliz

Final Flight
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Sometimes when I'm bored I like to search for jobs on monster in career tracks very different from my own. If I find a job listing that sounds interesting I sometimes invent a life that would go along with that path... just to see what would come up, I typed "Figure Skating" in the keyword field.

This listing came up, and it sounds like such a dream gig! Unfortunately it was posted in June so I'm sure that they have filled it.


FREELANCE ASSISTANT FIGURE SKATING RESEARCHER
Company: ABC Sports Location: New York, NY 10023
Status: Full Time, Temporary/Contract/Project Job Category: Arts, Entertainment, and Media
Education Level: Bachelor's Degree
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Job Description

Job Description

ABC Sports seeks a freelance assistant researcher for the 2006-2007 figure skating season. Duties include assisting the head researcher with interviewing athletes, conducting research, compiling results, monitoring news, and writing research manuals; traveling to selected international competitions; providing information and answering questions for announcers and production staff; general proofreading and fact-checking.



Job Qualifications

Strong writing, research, and editing skills and solid sports knowledge required. Figure skating experience/knowledge and fluency in a foreign language (especially Russian, Japanese, or Chinese) a plus. International travel experience and knowledge of music are helpful. Journalism experience and/or television research experience preferred.

Pay/benefits



This is a freelance position and benefits are not provided. Pay is hourly and overtime-eligible.



Dates of employment



Work will begin in New York, NY offices in mid-September and end after the 2007 World Championships.
 

Ladskater

~ Figure Skating Is My Passion ~
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
I often wish I had stuck with figure skating and made a career out of it. It's too late now of course, and hindsight is always 20/20. I used to sit and dream of what could have been and often suffered emotionally over it. I now can look back at my skating days with fond memories and realize life sometimes takes us in a different path than we wanted, but must accept what is.

Nice dream job though!!!!
 

Kwanford Wife

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
ITA... I've seen quite a few interesting jobs in skating lately and its too bad that I have that whole mortgage, bills, kid's soccer costs, etc. to keep me grounded in Richmond... when I had the opportunity to take my show on the road to Colorado and work as an event coordinator at skating competitions... life is so not fair...
 

tully

Rinkside
Joined
Jul 16, 2006
this may be slightly off topic but does anybody know what a garden-variety skating choreographer can earn...somebody who is just working with a multitude of people in the lower ranks?

i have a 16 yr old neice (almost 17) who isn't thrilled about college, frankly. but she loves choreography-- does all of it for her pom squad , as well as all the routines for her younger sister (a competition dancer). She doesn't skate herself, but is highly athletic and could probably learn as much as she needed to. She's a good student too, and would probably pick up on CoP fairly quickly
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
choreography

You asked,
this may be slightly off topic but does anybody know what a garden-variety skating choreographer can earn...somebody who is just working with a multitude of people in the lower ranks?

i have a 16 yr old neice (almost 17) who isn't thrilled about college, frankly. but she loves choreography-- does all of it for her pom squad , as well as all the routines for her younger sister (a competition dancer). She doesn't skate herself, but is highly athletic and could probably learn as much as she needed to. She's a good student too, and would probably pick up on CoP fairly quickly

If your niece doesn't skate herself, she shouldn't expect to do much more with skaters than teach them how to move well off ice, and maybe come up with general themes and arm movements, etc., for a program.

I don't know where you're located . . . in the US, COP is not yet being used below juvenile level and only at the national championships for juveniles and intermediates next year. It may take several years before it would be used at no-test through pre-juvenile levels at all, or be widespread for juveniles and intermediates.

Some of the primary tasks of a choreographer in creating a program designed for COP, or to score well in the old system for that matter, would be to put together step sequences and to come up with the linking movements between elements, including for instance steps leading into a jump. For this, it's necessary not only to know the difference between, say, rockers and choctaws, or just threes and mohawks at low levels where most or all the step sequences are going to be level 1 anyway, but to understand in your body which transitions from one step to the next flow naturally and which feel counterintuitive (which makes them harder, or impossible for low-level skaters, without necessarily gaining points from judges).

So understanding COP would not be relevant until 1) it's adopted to apply to low-level programs that a beginner choreographer might work on, 2) she had time to reach an intermediate skating level herself so she'd have more skating knowledge than her low-level clients, or 3) she becomes an established off-ice choreographer well-enough known for her creativity that higher level skaters would want to work with a non-skating choreographer.

If she really wanted to be a skating choreographer as a long-term career goal, my first advice would be to learn how to skate -- at least up to intermediate or novice Moves in the Field, or Silver compulsory dances. Learning jumps and spins would be optional. And that would take at least as much time and money commitment as going to community college.

As a non-skater, she'd never be able to do more than work as an adjunct to a coach, mainly putting finishing touches on the coach's basic choreography. Unless or until her movement ideas are so interesting and recognized as such that she would be sought out to create programs in the studio and have the skater (if advanced enough) or coach translate the movements onto the ice.

In other words, she could become a professional choreographer apart from skating, and then come to skating in later years after she had established herself. I don't know about the career options for a choreographer specializing in things like pom squad, probably better than for serious modern dance artistes, who usually need day jobs to support their art. It's certainly possible to make a modest living as a dance teacher and also choreographer for Broadway-style shows at the local or semi-professional level, or professionally if she's good enough and driven enough to establish herself in a competitive field.

Depending on what kinds of dance she's interested in and how good a dancer she is, I'd recommend either going to a college where she can major in dance with a focus on choreography, or spending a few years after high school working as a professional dancer and see if that can lead her into opportunities to try her hand at professional choreography in those fields, and then branch out from there.

Meanwhile, if she really is interested in choreographing for skating, my best advice would be to become a begining skater herself and make up some programs for herself to show off how well her choreography talent can showcase her limited skating skills -- if she can do it for herself, she could do it for other beginners.

But don't expect skating choreography by itself to be more lucrative than the cost of learning to skate and/or going to college.
 
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gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
http://www.figureskatingmystery.com/

BTW, the author of these mysteries held the skating researcher job, or one similar to it, for ABC a number of years ago, and her heroine in the books does the same. So that would give you an idea of what to expect, apart from all the murders which one would hope would not be a part of it in real life.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Outstanding and informative post, GKelly, about aspects of figure skating that don't usually get much attention on the message boards. :clap:
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
There's always giving out the rented pair of skates at public sessions. Don't laugh, it's a nice summertime job for a teenager before school starts.

Joe
 

Kwanford Wife

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Joesitz said:
There's always giving out the rented pair of skates at public sessions. Don't laugh, it's a nice summertime job for a teenager before school starts.

Joe

And don't forget the snack bar!!:p
 
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