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A Dazza-ling White Christmas Weekend Report

Jennifer Choo Sue Chin | January 13, 2014

The much-anticipated weekend came after a long wait but passed quickly. Time flies when you’re enjoying it!

Saturday 21 Dec 2013 – West Coast Swing Workshop with Darren Bailey & Fred Whitehouse, Tea Party & Choreography Competition

 

Group picture

Group picture

The event kick-started with Darren and Fred’s West Coast Swing workshop. About 70 people signed up for the workshop to learn some basic West Coast Swing steps as WCS is generally quite unknown here in Malaysia, but widely popular among line dancers abroad. With Darren’s expertise in breaking down dance steps, everyone on the floor managed to get the steps and able to west coast along with the music. With Fred’s fun ways, there were a lot of laughter. Basically everyone is satisfied with the workshop. We learned, the basic 6 count west coast rhythm, basic steps, the right-side-pass, and the whip with 8 count rhythm.

After the 2.5 hour workshop, we stop for a short tea break and just west coast socially, trying out the steps with different partners. A few lucky ones get to partner with Fred and Darren themselves, which was really awesome.

Then we proceeded to the much awaited for Choreography competition where contenders signed up to win the Bunga Raya Award (B.R.A.). The judges were: Darren Bailey, Fred Whitehouse, Lim Sae Min, Jennifer Choo & Bunga Raya herself. The intention of the competition was to encourage, improve and promote local and regional choreography. After a hard time discussing and arguing who to win the B.R.A., the judges selected the winners:

  1. Alice Cheong: Work Hard Play Hard >Stepsheet< >Video<
  2. Soo Wong: Reach for the Stars >Stepsheet< >Video<
  3. Wendee Chen: La Botella >Stepsheet< >Video<

Consolation prizes go to (in alphabetical order):

  • Adeline Cheng & Alison Johnstone: Fire Starter >Stepsheet< >Video<
  • Ayu Permana (Indonesia): I Can’t Believe >Stepsheet< >Video<
  • Cat Low: Come To Me >Stepsheet< >Video<
  • Jasmine Leong: FB Like (Y) >Stepsheet< >Video<

Check out the dances! They are great! Everyone is a winner and I will be having these dances in my next events!

Sunday 22 Dec 2013 A Dazza-ling White Christmas Line Dance Party (11 am – 4:30 pm)

White angels, fairies, princes and princesses trickled into the Hee Lai Ton restaurant as early at 10 am with Christmas carols in the air. With almost everyone dressed to the “Dazza-ling” White Christmas theme, the restaurant turned into a myriad of white, true to the White Christmas feeling. With almost 300 guests coming from as far as USA, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore and local Malaysians (Klang Valley, Perak, Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Kelantan, Johor, Melaka), it was indeed a gathering of old and new friends with the same passion, line dancing.

To top it off, the stage was immaculately decorated (Thanks! Benedict E) with a fire-place with flickering flames, a 8 feet high Christmas tree (Thanks Ivy Low) decorated in silver and white ornaments and plenty of gifts wrapped and arranged under the tree and all around the stage. Thanks to my friends who put up the decorations in approximately 3 hours!!

Ben, Philip, Goot and Jeannie putting the backdrop up

Ben, Philip, Goot and Jeannie putting the backdrop up

Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree, Fireplace and Backdrop

In between the 70 lined up current and classic line dances, Darren taught the crowd 2 of his recent choreography. The first one LOVE REALLY HURTS was a simple jive to an upbeat music by Billy Ocean, Love Really Hurts Without You. It’s 32 count 4 wall and has multiple restarts to phrased to the music. Later on, Darren taught a dance which was just choreographed with Fred, YOU, ME AND THE MUSIC to Lemar’s song of the same title. This is a funky 2 wall high intermediate line dance but the crowd absolutely love this one.

Love Really Hurts

Me, You and the Music

Rebecca Lee, the well-known line dancer turned hip hop star in Malaysia, pulled off a superb high energetic performance with her students, which included dances like Mr Saxobeat and Darren & Fred’s own Trespassing, much to their enjoyment. The finale of the performance was topped off with the appearance of Rebecca’s hip hop friend doing a flip.

Darren and Fred were also requested to do a dance demo of Darren’s dance co-choreographed with Roy Verdonk, Roy Hadisubroto, Raymond Sarlemijn, and Pim van Grootel. It’s a really beautiful dance and with Darren’s and Fred’s superb dance technique, the demo became more like a performance!

Christmas is a season of giving. More than 150 lucky draw and  250 table draw prizes were given away to lucky winners. Sponsors include Yu Yu Dance Shoes of Cheras and Mary Kay cosmetics who sponsored the main draw prizes. Everyone went home with more than a Christmas gift! There were also pop quizzes being asked on the FB event page to set excitement before the event and some of the quick-witted winners were: Leong Mei Ling, Soo Wong, Jessie Cheong, Debbie Lem, Lee Ros and Andrea. The final live quiz asked was why was the theme of the party chosen to be “Dazza-ling White Christmas” – Leong Mei Ling hits the bulls-eye with the answer, “Dazza is Darren’s nickname, while White comes from Fred’s surname, Whitehouse”.

When the clock stroke 4.30pm, many line dancers were reluctant to leave. Many still took the opportunity to pose for photographs with each other and of course with the special guests Darren and Fred. Many wonder if they’ll get to see them again. Well, let’s make that a 2014 Christmas wishlist… til the next event!

 

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competition, new dance, party, Performance, Tips & Techniques, Workshop
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APDX Competitions

Jennifer Choo Sue Chin | August 6, 2011

Time flies! Whilst it was about 3 months ago when my gang and I decided to train for the competitions, it seemed like we only signed up yesterday. Our wait finally ended as this weekend is the APDX weekend!

Never in my wildest dreams had I thought I’ll ever take part in a line dance individual competition. But I yearn to dance with confidence and grace, displayed by my seasoned competitor dance friends. With the encouragement of my dance instructor and friends, I thickened my skin and jumped right in. I reckoned the vigorous training would help me improve my techniques n presentation skills. It would also make me a more wholesome line dancer, instructor and choreographer.

My normal daily and weekly routine was quickly replaced by highly disciplined training and dance practice. It was tough as my job required me to travel extensively during same period, taking my focus off from my training. My social and domestic life took a backseat to make way for my business travels and training. I have LOTS of catching up to do when the weekend is over!

The training has been tough. We learnt and drilled on techniques like never before. Muscles were sprained and tears flowed. Steps can be picked up easily from stepsheets, but not the techniques and stylings which make everything flow and dancers moves look pretty and presentable. I almost chickened out many times, getting anxiety attacks etc. Dancing became stressful instead of being enjoyable and I kept asking myself why had I put myself through such misery. But I quickly realised that the more miserable and stressed out you are, the more the performance will deteriorate. When you let go of the stress and just enjoy the music, the steps will seem lighter and the dance could be executed effortlessly.

In short, I persevered with the encouragement and advice from my close friends. By dancing on the APDX dance-floor would make me a winner of my own, whether or not I was awarded a medal of any colour. I surpassed myself into a better dancer, better control of my time and emotions, better guts, better techniques, better presentation skills, better diet and better in many other fields. Compete with yourself and not others!

Thanks for all the support and good-luck wishes my friends and students has sent me via fb, email n SMS. Especially those who are coming to give me moral support on that day! It’s time and I’m ready to burn the dancefloor!!

Watch me dancing Angel’s Waltz:

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“Commandment #9” – Competition

Jennifer Choo Sue Chin | July 25, 2011

Remember my “10 ways to improve your line dancing” article sometime back? Click here to read.

I’ll concentrate on the 9th way in the list:

Join a competition – An excellent way to improve yourself is by competing. Olympic and World records are broken when top athletes compete with one another and push themselves harder and beyond their usual fare. Likewise, when you take part in a competition, the competitive pressure will push you further and better. Dancing alongside excellent and top dancers will also give you a tremendous experience. Winning them will give you more confidence and go for more and higher levels of competition.

The reason I’m writing is because… well, I’ll be taking part in my first line dance competition in August. My utmost objective in this stressful endeavor is to get some exposure and experience in the competition field. Also to go through the vigorous competition training and make myself a better and stronger dancer. I hope to also improve my presentation skills and to overcome stage fright.. LOL! If I can overcome all these, I’m already a winner on my own 🙂

Wish me luck! Cos getting into the finals or podium finishing would definitely be a bonus! Especially after all my extensive travels since June. I’m currently, in fact, blogging from Hanoi. I’m on a working trip here for 2 weeks and when I get back, it’ll be competition day! Hopefully I won’t lose my focus and form as I haven’t had the opportunity, space and also will to practise!

I’ll also be competing in the choreography competition – my first time too. I’ve been getting a lot of encouragements to compete in choreography competitions since Hare Ram were released some years back but never found any opportunity/events to compete in. I’ve choreographed a new dance and will be releasing the dance after the competition, whether or not I win it. So do stay tuned. For now, let’s just keep the dance and music under wraps first… 😉

Till then, will blog more about my competition experience when I get over it!

From Hanoi with love <3

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Line Dance Competition – MBPJ Karnival Rakyat

Jennifer Choo Sue Chin | March 17, 2009
Karnival Rakyat Selangor

Karnival Rakyat Selangor

LOL, never would I imagine I’d be taking part in a line dance competition! But after watching our performance during DAP Women’s Day LD party, we were encouraged to join a LD competition organised by the local council MBPJ in conjuction with Karnival Rakyat (People’s Carnival). Since it required almost no extra efforts (or so we thought!), we thought alright, let’s do it and recycle our performance! (and hope to win some cash to cover our costumes costs!)

The competition was to be held just a week after the performance (Sun, 15 Mar 2009), exactly 7 days. As in my earlier post, the only time which we could all practice was Saturday mornings for 1 hr or so. However this time round, Maggie could not join us as she’s moving house, while Desmond had to be at work on that Saturday morning. As Maggie couldn’t join us, we had to restructure our formation but can’t actually do it properly as Desmond wasn’t there with us! We also unofficially had Wendee Chen as our team manager as she put in the registration forms for us and informed us of the competition. 🙂

Not only that, we had some Latin couple dancing in our routine which had to be scraped off, as it’s a LD competition! And again, Desmond was involved in that … So, it’s just 6 of us restructuring our formation and positioning for 7 dancers. Practice? Haha, almost non existent as by the time we got all settled, it’s noon and we all had to go! I had then relayed the changes via phone to Desmond. Thank Alexander Graham Bell for that!

ChinaTown KL

ChinaTown KL

Later in the evening, the 3 of us ladies, drove to ChinaTown (Petaling Street) in search of the Butterfly drape top which Cindy and I wore during last week’s performance. The other girls liked it and thought we should all be in uniform since it’s a competition. But we walked up and down Petaling Street to no avail, none of the shops has the stock any longer as these tops were bought about a year back. We then decided to get 5 similar tops for the girls at least to be uniformed. But… those tops that were available in a quantity of at least 5, were NOT NICE, and those that were nice, were NOT available in 5 pieces!

We walked in and out several shops, some frequenting it for more than 3 times, to ‘stock check’ in case we can find the same top, hopefully, 2 in Shop A, 2 in Shop B and 1 in Shop C. LOL. It then started to rain and our legs began to ache. Poor Jocelyn wasn’t even feeling well as the flu virus was attacking. But she, being the ultimate shopaholic, bought so many other stuffs! LOL. I just lost count…! We left ChinaTown empty handed (of the costumes) and drove dejectedly back to Subang. It was then we decided to hop into Summit Subang to try our last chance. And there we found something NICE and available in 5 pieces! What a wasted trip to Chinatown!

We all went home extremely tired. Supposed to meet at the venue the next day at 11am as we wanted to mark our steps first and show Desmond the steps physically. Competitors shd be there by 12pm.

We gathered at A&W adjacent to the venue. As most of us hadn’t had breakfast, so it was breakfast at A&W. And while munching down those fries and gulping down the root beer, we ran through some steps/formation/arm movements with Desmond, with the music blarring from my handphone.

Group pic

Group pic

We then moved to the venue. It had rained the day earlier and the venue was Dataran PJ – a large field where cricketers/footballers practice in the evenings and on weekends. Thus, the ground was kinda muddy. The ‘stage’ where we’re supposed to dance on was a small space on the field covered by 6 x 2 plywood boards. Go figure…

Our team drew 2nd pole position in a pool of 6 teams. First team was a group of Cowgirls in vests and cowboy hats and a pistol to match! Can’t remember much what they did as we were quite tensed, but their ending pose was to fire their pistols and the rubber sucker ‘bullet’ flew out. Creative!

Then it was our turn and we went onto the planks. Not easy to dance especially with our smooth NC2S dances, we can’t even turn/twirl properly.

Finale pose

Finale pose

Thus our steps r not too uniformed as each of us struggled to keep balanced on the planks atop uneven grounds below. Likewise, when team Cindai came in, it’s very noticeble that they were struggling with the floor and the space too. We quickly adapt and thus JB Summertime, Cha Cha Conchita and Dhoom Dhoom were better executed. In fact, Cha Cha Conchita was very well and uniformly executed, payback for the boohoo we did during the previous Sunday!

After our turn, there were a kids team (age abt 10-12) doing Mony Mony. They were so cute! After that, there were a teenagers team doing Part Time Lover who were pretty impressive too. Both teams are under Lane Lee and are frequent LD competitors. Then there was another group of middle-aged ladies dancing A-go-go to a chinese song. Lastly was another group of ladies in green tshirt, doing Southern Delight. So there were a total of 6 teams competing.

Receiving prize from Menteri Besar Selangor - Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim

Receiving prize from Menteri Besar Selangor - Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim

The competition ended at about 1pm but we had to wait till 4.30 pm (after all the speeches) to know the results. We won the 3rd prize, winning RM300 and a hamper of junkfood. 1st and 2nd place went to the frequent competitor teams, the kids and the teenagers. There was a little bit of ‘drama’ after we collected our prize which amused us a great deal, but no, I’ll leave that out of this post! 😛

The moment we left Dataran PJ with our winnings, the sky broke open and the rain poured cats and dogs.

And so how do we split our cash prize? We’re having a get-together again for some great seafood this weekend to celebrate our win. What else is heavenly besides dancing? FOOD! 😛

 

At PJ Seafood Restaurant

At PJ Seafood Restaurant

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