This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on April 27, 2017

Henry Chan (pic) greeted me with a bright smile as he opened the door to the dance studio located in Fraser Business Park. The lanky 55-year old has a sprightly agility about him that betrays the years of training he’s done in ballroom and Latin dance.

A sign downstairs had highlighted the studio’s recognition as the longest running dance school in Malaysia by the Malaysia Book of Records, a nod given last year.  “We used to have a school in Petaling Jaya (PJ), Pahang, Johor, Penang, Seremban and Kuala Lumpur (KL) — about six schools. But we’ve closed it all except for this one now,” says Chan, who represented Malaysia in ballroom and Latin dance competitions professionally during the late 1980s. 

“Teaching dance is very much a personalised thing, and so students used to follow me. At the time there was no AirAsia. So I would teach in KL, then take the night train to Penang, reach there in the morning and start teaching again for two days, then come back again. I was so tired and couldn’t give my best, so after a while we decided to close up the rest and concentrate on the PJ and KL schools, until my father retired and we sold that one as well,” he adds. 

It was Chan’s father that started him on his dance journey. Fresh out of secondary school in 1978, the Seremban boy went down to Singapore to look for work. His father, a competitive dancer in the 60s, had partnered with a friend to open a dance school there. It was there he started taking classes, during the height of the disco era. “It was a time where we would dance, not in small studios, but in arenas and in big open spaces,” he reminisces. 

From there, he went to the UK for a year to learn dance full-time. When he returned, father and son decided to open a dance school in Seremban. In KL, their first studio was located in Jalan Imbi, where they first met students who have since fallen in love, gotten married, and who now have their grown-up children taking lessons with Chan. 

History aside, Chan’s contribution to the Malaysian ballroom and Latin dance scene has been significant. Henry Dance Studio is a pioneering school when it comes to introducing a structured syllabus, using the National Association of Teachers of Dancing, London (NATD) syllabus with an international examiner visiting yearly.  

As an organiser and qualified international adjudicator for the NATD, Chan has helped promote dancesport through competitions, events and workshops. Last year, he was also made a lifetime member of the professional association, one of only 20 or so members to receive the honour. 

“Times have changed a lot. Maybe 10 years ago, a lot of the schools were still run by older people or seen more as a leisure activity for older folks. But in the last five to six years, we have seen many more children – from ages five to 17 — taking up ballroom and Latin dance,” reveals Chan. 

A contributing factor to this is the recognition of dancesport by the Ministry of Education as an extra-curricular activity for primary and secondary school students. 

One of his teachers, Royce Eng, 34, who teaches children of different levels, agrees that there’s a revival in the popularity of the dance form. “Parents are now more accepting of ballroom and Latin dance,” Eng says. 

By his own admission, Chan has been in the industry for a long time. His focus and challenge now is to help grow the next generation of teachers. Currently employing five teachers on a part-time basis, he says his biggest challenge is to motivate them. 

“Year in year out, it’s very easy for teachers to get burnt out, or they may get distracted by other things. Especially for those teaching full-time — not just with me, they may teach in other schools, or in the gym, or kindergarten even — you tend to teach the same kinds of people, the same level year in year out. So how do you keep yourself motivated? You have to enjoy your work in our line to last long,” Chan explains. 

While he does not tie his teachers down full-time, most of them stay with him for years. Chan says he values his teachers like his family, though he expects a certain level of dedication in return. Not unlike academic institutions, Chan meets regularly with his team to discuss the progress of their students. “They don’t just teach and go off. You can’t tell your student who comes and asks you about a step, ‘sorry your 60 minutes is up’. Sometimes they even call you in the middle of the night. You have to go beyond,” he points out. 

Eng, who took up dance only at the age of 20, aims to continue building and training more qualified dancers and teachers within dancesport, using proper teaching methods. He credits Chan’s legacy, stating, “He’s a pioneer — he and his father. They built from zero to today. If not, we won’t have the industry like what it is now.” 

Not one to rest on his laurels, Chan has already begun laying the foundations for his next step. “My father is 85 and he’s still teaching for me,” laughs Chan, adding, “So I don’t know when I will retire here. But after that, I will concentrate on China — training, teaching, organising competitions and exams. There are very good dancers there. So there’s a big potential to open up for the international stage.”