Sun, Nov 1: Stand Up! – An Amazing Event for an Amazing Cause

Oct 09 had been a month of ups and downs…a couple of very high ups but also some related disappointments and pressure from a few different sources. But what better way to cap up Oct and to welcome in the Pig month (which officially started Nov 7) than this charity event that Jojo invited me to be a part of…

Stand Up! was basically a well, stand up comedy night (featuring Papi Zack, Andrew Netto and the one and only Harith Iskandar) peperred with music and…rhythm tap! When Jojo asked me to contribute to the cause, I jumped at it! But let me tell you about the cause it was for:

“Shambala for kids is a place where we nurture children from challenged backgrounds in love & affection through our creative mentoring programs” – Lina Sutton.

Lina is an incredible pranic healer and the founder of the programme which nurtures  these children in life, creative, performing and communciation skills and well as self-healing. The volunteer mentors are a hosts of awesome people -including 2 of my friends, Hannah Lo and of course Jojo Struys. (those of you wanting to find out more about Shambala for Kids pls contact Lina at 012-633-1994 or email shambalaforkids@gmail.com.

Let me tell you….the event was awesome! Besides the incredible performances by the stand up-ers, the night also featured an up-and-coming young band, The Ramanados, Ash Nair accompanied on guitar by Yuri Wong and violin by Dennis Lau and tap. Watch out for the Ramanados (one of them i found out is like 15 yrs old..!); such an incredibly talented band with great potential.

As for my & Jojo’s tap portion, in whole it went pretty good too. We did 2 separate, short bits- the 1st was a bit chaotic and a bit too *short* but we made it up with the jazzy 2nd bit which went really well. The crowd (squeezed into tiny No Black Tie) was awesome and such good sports. Besides ticket sales, the crowd contributed to over RM 20, 000 through bids for the auction items (either donations by generous souls or art work created by the Shambala kids).

My personal surprise for the evening was after  the whole thing ended, when we adjourned to a restaurant across the street to finish up dinner (generously sponsored by a friend of the event). Most of us performers had earlier started dinner there earlier but because of rehearsal or prepping for performance didn’t/couldn’t stay for the entire course. So supper was sorta like “Dinner Pt 2″, with drinks, chit-chat, chilling etc. 

Now, lo and behold turns out that after the show, at No Black Tie itself, Jothi (who accompanies Jojo/myself a lot on these gigs) had started a jam session with a visiting world-class drummer/percussionist ( Valtinho Anastacio). Long story short– somehow Jothi managed to get him to join us at Delucca where we were chillin’ and before I knew it there was a jam session on the djembe and taps!

Jammin\’ with Valtinho Anastacio & Jothi

Valtinho was so kind to not only jam with Jothi, Jojo and me but also pretty much gave me and Jojo an impromptu lesson on rhythm and improv. The wonderful thing is that this is the kind of experience that is difficult to come across here at home in Malaysia. There’s very few outlets (except for the ones we create ourselves) for me to challenge myself in tap (unlike at places like in the US). I constantly learn and improve on teaching, choreographing and performing but really it’s difficult to push and polish my OWN tap chops. So this experience, though short (we jammed for about 15 min then I was too tired and took off my tap shoes LOL–hey it was like 2am and after the actual show, ok) was really a much, much needed breath of fresh air!  

So Valtinho, it was great to meet you (I regret that we hardly got to talk hehe) and tks so much for your generosity. Also, to the (mainly) ladies who put the entire event together, what an incredible job done!

PS. Sorry for the “ghostly” youtube clip of the jam. Captured in night mode la :)