Tatler speaks to Choong Wan Chin, the co-founder and artistic director of Malaysia's first ever professional ballet company as well as ballet stars Yui Kyotani and Benjamin Cook, as they rehearse for their upcoming show
In late 2020, Choong Wan Chin—along with Datin Jane Lew and Rachel Chew—established Ballet Theatre Malaysia (BTM). Lew is the CEO of Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPAC) and a former ballerina herself while Chew was a former dancer at Ballet Jörgen Canada and DPAC Dance Company. It has been a long road to establishing a professional classical ballet company in Malaysia. “Survival is a challenge. To achieve high standards, we need professional dancers, professional facilities, professional staff in artistic, production and admin. All which requires funding,” Choong explains.
For Choong, who has wanted to start a professional ballet company in Malaysia since 2014, BTM is a dream come true. Her own dance journey began at age 5 and took her to Walnut Hill School of Performing Arts in the US at 14 and later, the Singapore Dance Theatre at 17 as an apprentice. She also participated in the Prix de Lausanne, a prestigious ballet competition, before landing a spot at Shanghai Dance School, where she trained alongside great talents, including Yuanyuan Tan, who became a principal of the San Francisco Ballet.
A veteran in the field, she has performed around the world and spent 12 years in Japan where she was the resident choreographer and principal teacher of Ena Ballet Studio and the co-founder of Ena Ballet Studio Company. She’s also the founder and artistic director of KL Dance Works, and has staged 10 major productions and international ballet galas at Istana Budaya from 2010 to 2019. In fact, Yuanyuan Tan played Carmen in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra's 2015 showcase Carmen In Dance, staged and choreographed by Choong.
While it's not the first time Choong has staged Carmen since her first production in Japan back in 2008, the upcoming show by BTM will be special as she will be staging it with her own troupe. No doubt Choong has seen varied productions of how the story’s been told and she’s certainly done her fair share of ballet repertoires—but it was the novella by French author Prosper Merímée that she is basing her imagination on. And she’s using her creative licence to tell her own version of this famous tale of passion, jealousy, obsession and tragedy and enable the audience to feel what is being shown on stage with emotive storytelling.
