Sports Hero

 

Flora Lam, Chairperson of Forever DanceSport Club

Dance often, be happy and stay healthy.

One could easily find Flora an optimistic and upbeat person when chatting with her. She seemed excited about everything and her face would light up with a broad smile whenever we spoke of what made DanceSport so attractive. Flora started off as a DanceSport athlete and later transitioned into the role of an instructor. In the blink of an eye, she has been engaged in the promotion and teaching of dance for 15 years and has witnessed the development and evolution of DanceSport in Hong Kong.

A life-changing encounter
Originally a kindergarten teacher, Flora first got into dancing in 1992. At that time, DanceSport was generalised as social dance and participated mostly by adults. As the times change, Flora’s students in the Community Sports Club have ranged from all ages. DanceSport is now classified into two main categories, namely Latin Dance and Ballroom Dance, and competitions held for various age groups and divisions are very different from the past in terms of scale and organisation.

Dance is more than a hobby to her as it has changed her life. It was by chance that she started to learn dancing, and she was fortunate enough to have found a dance partner with whom she shared the same visions. The two later tied the knot and now their daughter is also deeply involved in DanceSport as a member of the Hong Kong team. She frankly admitted that although she had experienced a lot of hardships when she organised the Community Sports Club for DanceSport, she really enjoyed the process of teaching dance because the satisfaction she got from inspiring her students’ interest in DanceSport and witnessing them turning from beginners to participants in performances and competitions has made everything worthwhile.

Teach all members of the community equally
When Flora first became a dance teacher, she taught interest classes for children organised by the LCSD in primary schools. As she had teaching experience and understood the mentality of children, designing the classes was a piece of cake for her. Since then, she has realised that people will understand and commit to DanceSport if they have developed an interest in the sport and gained satisfaction from it. She wants people to know that DanceSport is both an exercise that can improve physical fitness and a form of performance art through which dancers can shine on stage.

Since the establishment of Forever DanceSport Club, Flora has incessantly strived to promote and popularise DanceSport. To achieve her goal, she has organised various courses, including interest classes, regular training classes, parent-child classes and classes for the elderly, etc., to introduce DanceSport to people of all ages in the hope that the gorgeous costumes and beautiful dance movements will attract more people to learn dancing. She looks forward to availability of more platforms for DanceSport performances, such as dance-themed fun days in shopping malls of housing estates, community halls and schools, etc.. In view of the aging population, more classes can be organised for the elderly to help them train their muscles and to increase the vitality of the city. Flora hopes that the Community Sports Club Project will attract more people to keep DanceSport a lifelong sport.