Dancers express themselves through street dancing

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CHAN Hon Fee first took up street dancing during his secondary school years, with the intention of impressing girls.

Today, eight years after taking up the sport, the 21-year-old’s passion for the art form has intensified and has become part of his life.

Now a dance instructor at a local studio in Ipoh, Chan said he had learned so much from dancing and embraced what it was truly about.

“It is no longer just about twisting and turning and breaking out into some cool moves,” he told MetroPerak.

Agility: A member of the Soul Impact group doing a head spin.

“Street dancing is a form of new-found freedom and it suits my personality,” he said, adding that he chose street dance over ballet or ballroom dancing because it had less rules.

“I am free to express myself through my moves, and I am also able to create new techniques from this freedom to express myself,” Chan said.

And during the “Let’s Jiggy Streetdance Competition” that was held at the Ipoh City Hall recently, Chan’s team Harng Yeh (Cantonese for ‘something good’) impressed the judges with their dance moves and landed them in first place.

Chan and his fellow dancers, Kee Choo Realm, 21; Oh Chin Teng, 17; and Lai Kok Yoong, 18; edged out six other teams to win RM2,000.

A notable segment of his team’s performance used street-dance moves to convey a bittersweet love story.

“We were inspired by international dancer Keone Madrid’s performance of the song He Won’t Go, so we decided to improvise our moves to form our own rendition of a love story through dance,” Chan explained about the idea behind the performance.

Together now: Harng Yeh performing a well-synchronised dance, which was one of the group’s strong points that contributed to their victory.

“We only took two weeks to practise our dance.

“We had intense practice sessions for two to three hours daily,” Chan said, adding that his team aimed to establish itself as one of the best dance groups around.

The “Let’s Jiggy” dance competition was jointly organised by the D’One Dance and D’Artiz studios, and brought together dance groups from all around the state.

There were also awe-inspiring guest performances by renowned dance group Elecoldxhot and local indie-rock band Busco.

Special guest speaker Brenden Brown from Australia was also invited to give an inspiring motivational talk during the event.