Tiny dancer with the world in her hands

In reality, I’m talking to one of the foremost figures in DanceSport in the country in a coffee shop in a mall – fake plastic chairs and fake plastic flowers and fake plastic mugs, very antiseptic, the very anti-thesis of all that’s artistic, graceful and free-spirited. But I imagine myself inside dancer Edna Ledesma’s studio with the kitschy name of Club Bamboleo, and she is telling me everything esoteric (and even erotic) about the different dances.

"Samba is a ritualistic Cuban dance," Ledesma says, "and it has a lot of pelvic action. In Brazil, it is exotic and erotic. Rumba, on the other hand, is the dance of love. It’s a woman’s dance. Here, she can show her passion, grace and femininity. The curious thing about it is that she has to show a lot of mixed feelings. It’s an I-love-you-I-hate-you type of dance."

She adds that dance (just as in love and life) one doesn’t have to be sweet and giving all the time. "Dancers can be arrogant and bitchy. Rumba has a lot of teasing involved – it’s all about being together and staying away." (And all the tangled lovers in this wayward world all have an inkling what this means.)

Cha-cha, Ledesma describes, is very cheeky. "It is very flirty and very playful, while jive is more like boogie and rock n’ roll. Jive is a test of stamina; judges look at your strength, flexibility and personality when you do the jive."

Ledesma also offers a few tidbits about mambo ("In other countries, mambo is the in-thing"); swing ("People feel they can lose weight in swing because of the non-stop turning and changing of places"); and pasa-doble ("It is the dance of the bull and the matador, and it conveys a lot of passion").

Of course, none of this makes a ripple inside my non-dancer brain. In music, there are those who are tone-deaf, people who can’t distinguish an A Minor from an A Major even if Marilyn Manson aimed his science fiction catheter at them. This writer with two left feet was born without a dancer’s bone in his poor excuse of a body. So, that makes me … what? Grace-less? Step-deprived? I ask her what is the first thing she teaches dolts who want to be like DanceSport legend… no, not that "Clashdance" bimbo who slipped on gasoline… twice… but Gaynor Fairweather.

"First thing you need to learn is posture," Ledesma shares. "Then the shifting of the weight from foot to foot. That is so important, and we take that for granted. Before you can study dancing you must learn to walk properly, and everything follows."

According to Ledesma, dancers are made, not born. Each of us has the potential (including this writer who is as funky and graceful as Dingdong Dantes with ants in his pants), but it takes discipline since dancing concerns footwork, ribcage action, plus head, arm and hand coordination.

The dancer adds that their basic warm-up is not spinning madly or doing lifting, but walking. "In walking, you see everything – the alignment, the posture, the balance. After the walk, we teach the steps," she says.

And Edna Ledesma has walked and pirouetted her way into hearts of judges in DanceSport competitions from the Philippines to the Blackpool Dance Festival, which goes gaga over dance at the tail end of May every year.

"My biggest achievement so far is winning Blackpool with my partner John Co," Ledesma enthuses. "We placed 2nd, beating 73 other couples, mostly Europeans. Blackpool is the Las Vegas of DanceSport. It is where all the talents go to compete."

Ledesma – together with partners Janno Poloyapoy, Genice Marquez and Brian Calon – has also won in every Asian competition since ’98, placing first in tilts in Singapore where a lot of International DanceSport Federation competitions are held. She also has two instructional dance CDs released by Galaxy Records. In the Philippines, Ledesma and her partner are considered as one of the top two Latin couples from ’97 up to the present.

She thinks that her latest partner, John Co, is the perfect match for her, visually as well as personally. "It is very important to have a good personal relationship with one’s partner, because it really affects how one dances."

Curious, I ask her what she is thinking about while dancing.

"Mentally, I’m counting all the time, but my partner and I try to make it look as effortless as possible. You know, my body and my partner’s body are always together, but as a rule, it is wise not to have a romantic relationship with one’s partner."

So, you could rule romance out, but that doesn’t mean a partner isn’t meant for catching a falling partner. Literally, that is.

"I fell a couple of times, and all my partners were quick enough to catch me," the dancer shares. "But one time, there was 14 couples on the floor, and a tall Taiwanese guy bumped me and I fell down hard."

But most of the time, the performances are flawless. And that could only be achieved by – as in playing music, painting and writing – the dreaded P-word, practice.

"Practice is very important," she stresses. "We practice speed, elasticity, even the connection with one another. During competitions, the judges are studying everything you and your partner have worked on – technique, speed, grace and presentation. In August, I will start teaching kids about dancing, and hopefully find more talent, start them young and train them. We Filipinos have so much potential."

Another facet of Edna Ledesma (aside from being mom to three kids – Sabrina, David and Jacob) is that she also models for painters and photographers. Isn’t that ironic that in ballroom dancing, one is garbed in glittering costumes and screaming makeup, while in posing for artists one wears the empress’ new clothes.

"I have no inhibitions," Edna says matter-of-factly. "I see no malice in posing for painters and photographers. Nothing at all malicious about it."

You could even consider posing, like dancing, as a performance of sorts. I read an article in The Times (written by Rachel Campbell-Johnston, a nude model who posed for artist Euan Uglow) that however passive the model’s role apparently seems, she becomes an active presence in the painting. "Someone once said that to sit for one’s portrait," Johnston wrote, "is like being present at one’s own creation."

For Ledesma, maybe in one of those sessions wherein she sat very still (not moving a single bone in her body), she contemplated movement. Maybe in one of those sessions where stasis was important, she thought of flight as being more essential. Anyway, this one-time model wants to be remembered simply as a dancer.

"It’s not easy to dance," Ledesma concludes. "It may look easy, but it takes a lot of effort. Dancing is very subjective. What makes another dancer better than the other? I believe you should find your own style. Everybody can kick, flip, twirl… you should have your own personality beyond the steps."

So, for DanceSport champion Edna Ledesma, dancing is like being present at one’s own creation. Or more precisely, dancing is like creating oneself each step of the way.