Let's Enjoy Sport Dance Together!
By Susana Kuoc
Do you know what "Sport Dance" is? Actually, it has become one of the match items in the coming East Asian Games in 2005 hosted by Macau for the first time. Sport Dance, which includes Ballroom Dance and Latin Dance, once was very unfamiliar to most people. However following increasing enthusiasm about the East Asian Games, it is becoming a popular activity.
Michelle Loi and her partner in a competition.
There will be four pairs of Macau dancers to take part in the Sport
Dance competition in the East Asian Games this year. Michelle Loi Ka
I, who has danced since she was 14 years old and won many champions
in Latin dancing competitions, and her partner Dickson Zhou Da Xing,
are one pair of the representatives of the competition.
Loi has just come back from England where she participated in a competition. In this trip she got plenty of unforgettable experiences about dancing. She said, "I learned how to express my feeling through my dancing with the music. I tried to enjoy my dancing instead of being highly aware of the dance steps all the time that make me feel nervous." In the international dancing competition in London, Loi and her partner were selected in the second round of the Professional Latin Dance. "We got a very good result in the competition. It was because we had beaten three other Chinese professional couples whose levels had been higher than us in China before and also 60 other couples from different countries," she said, "now I've become more confident of myself and my dancing!"
Besides, Loi said that after she learned dancing, her whole life changed. She has not looked for any job upon graduation from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FSH) with a major in English Studies in the University of Macau last year. Instead, she has chosen to become a professional dance teacher and her income at the moment comes from her dancing classes. She hopes that she would have her own dance school in Macau in the future. "I'll continue to learn my dancing in London for months, and then I would go back to Macau to teach my students. In my opinion, I would like every dancer to improve his/her dancing skill, so that the level or the standard of dancing would be better in Macau," she added.
"I feel that Sport Dance is like an art, at the same time, it can improve our figures and help us to be stronger, because the Sport Dance is a dance which needs a lot of energy and power. Therefore, I think the Sport Dance is not just an art, it is also a sport, so I feel happy the Sport Dance has become an item in the East Asian Games!"