The Vancouver Courier
Vol.84 No.26 April 30, 1993
By Fiona Hughes
Swirling fluorescent green, pink, black, orange, white and blue gowns glide effortlessly across the ballroom dance floor. Black tails flutter in the air. Numbers are yelled out over the music.
It’s a place where a lady is a lady and a man is a man, say many who participate.
Ballroom dancing is on the upswing again and Andy and Wendy Wong are having a blast. The couple have been B.C.’s amateur ballroom dance champions for the last 13 years.
In 1993, they hope to be Canadian Champs (or at least finalists), but the competition is going to be stiff at the upcoming Canadian Championships at the Hotel Vancouver on April 10. Canada’s reigning modern dance champs, Quebecers Alain Doucet and Anik Jolicoeur, have been dancing since they were children.
The Wongs first hit the dance floor while students at UBC. They’d never done the jive, cha cha or foxtrot before. That is until they joined the university’s biggest club—the UBC Dance Club—and got hooked.
“When I’d gone through high school, I couldn’t do any sports because of commitment to my family,” said Andy, now a pharmacist.
“I never had dancing in mind but when I saw people dancing with no equipment I identified with it. On a student budget, you dance in sneakers and jeans. That’s the reason I joined. For the simplicity of it.”
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers enticed Wendy to put on her dancing shoes (or sneakers) and join the 700 member social club. “I always liked watching dancing on TV,” said Wendy, who joined the club in 1976. “I joined because I wanted to dance.”
Wendy and Andy didn’t know each other before joining. They started dancing together to compete. In 1981, they danced together as a married couple. The Wongs have come a long way from sneakers and jeans. Wendy, now a seamstress who make outfits for herself and other dancers, wears gowns costing anywhere from $800 to $1,600.
Having won 15 provincial championships, the Wongs feel it’s time to go pro. Being amateurs is too restricting. “Our dream is to make dancing our full-time career,” Andy, 37, said. “As amateurs, we can’t do anything in terms of giving lessons, we can’t do shows for money and we can’t promote ourselves. It’s very strict.”
The Wongs competed in their last provincial amateur Ballroom and Latin dance competition Saturday at the B.C. Open Amateur Ballroom and Latin Dance Championships, winning both the modern and latin events. “It was a nice way to finish,” Wendy, 37, said about their last B.C. amateur competition. “Now we practice.”
Practicing four times a week (“We’d like to do more, but who has the time?” Andy lamented) and taking lessons is what the Wongs do to improve, but it’s the competition that excites them. “It’s a challenge to get better,” Wendy said. “Competition is really the only way to measure how you improve and you can always be better. You can have the same routine for 10 years and still get better at it.”
Come April 10, with the home crowd to cheer them on, the Wongs will be “psyched, nervous and excited.” But being number one isn’t what it’s all about for them. “It’s not the winning,” Andy said. “It’s the competition. Some of the more exciting competitions we’ve been to are ones we haven’t won.”
