| ALISA ANG MARCH 2010 |
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Cheng Ballet would like to extend a warm welcome to Alisa Ang, who will soon be a familiar face within the teaching faculty. We also get her to share with us her thoughts and experience as a young teacher and dancer.
My mum told me that it was I, myself, who wanted to dance, so she went all out in search for a place where I could fulfil my ‘ballerina’ dream. I started dancing at the age of five. Back then, there were only very limited resources/studios available in Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia. But I still stayed with that studio, with a few different teachers for 10 years.
How did you know you wanted to take dance seriously?
My ballet friend who studied in Singapore told me about her new class in Singapore and so I joined her class. Living in JB back then, I travelled almost an hour or two (depending on the causeway traffic) in order to go for class every Saturday. The journey back to JB late in the evening was even worse.
Then, I thought to myself, why am I making my life miserable travelling in and out like this? Do I really want this? And the answer was yes. So after my SPM (Singapore’s O-Level equivalent), I auditioned for LaSalle. Although I got through successfully, I still wasn’t sure. I still had many doubts. The decision between studying Dance or A-Levels was the first biggest decision I ever made. And I am very lucky to have a very supportive family.
You studied at LaSalle, and then went on to Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts for 4 years....tell us what experiences, good and bad, that you’ve brought back with you.
After a year in LaSalle, I attended the audition for HKAPA in Singapore with my friends for the fun of it. Unexpectedly, I got in and that was the 2nd biggest decision that changed my life thoroughly.
The first year in Hong Kong was a struggle as the language & society is different there. Being all alone in HK, I got to ‘start all over again’ and learnt to be very independent. Gradually I adapted to Hong Kong’s living style and I enjoyed myself there so much that I almost did not want to come back.
I was pretty lucky that my intake was small and the teachers that taught our batch were all very attentive and experienced. We eventually impressed a lot of teachers during our final performances and exams. As we usually don’t learn the right thing at first, we usually had a lot of bad habits in dancing to get rid of. It definitely took me some time and scolding from my teachers to change.
I have learnt that we will have different teachers, at different stages with different styles. But like one of my teacher once said, “In this life, you will not get to stick to one mentor. So you just have to learn from all the teachers you get and digest the knowledge in order to improve. You will learn if you want to learn, even if you do not have the best teacher”
After I graduated, I also taught and performed for a ballet studio there. The kids there were very enthusiastic to learn but unfortunately the studio was small and Hong Kong is more of a place that only prioritizes syllabus work from RAD.
Any dance-related projects you’ve been on since you returned from Hong Kong?
When I decided to come back to Singapore from Hong Kong, I searched for quite a number of jobs and applied for many of them too. I was pretty lucky that at that time, ECNAD was looking for an intern. So I went ahead to contact them and immediately was asked to watch a rehearsal, learn and participated in it. That piece will be performed in March 2010. In between rehearsals, I also danced in their Halloween project at the Asian Civilizations Museum and some outreach projects in schools.
Yes, I am definitely looking forward to teaching at Cheng Ballet. The younger students here inspire me so much because they already know what they want at such a tender age and here is this Academy to help them realized that dream. I really want to teach the young ones the correct way so that they acquire less bad habitsg to change when they get older.