E d n a L e d e s m a : A s t o r y o f D a n c e & l i f e

The petite lady takes curlers out of her hair as she throws off a greeting and goes over her to-do list for the day: Edna Ledesma-Asano, Blackpool Dance Festival world champion, is a lady for whom multi-tasking is second nature.

The Blackpool festival has been held each year for the last 80 years and is the most prestigious dance sport festival in the world. For serious ballroom and Latin dance competitors, Blackpool is the holy grail, the big kahuna of their chosen dance form.

The contest lasts eight days, covering Latin American and ballroom dance. Last year, Edna and her partner John Derick Co beat 85 other couples for the trophy; in 2003 and 2004, the duo placed second in the Senior Latin division.

As she rises from her seat, the musculature of her arms and torso is the first thing one notices: whipcord lean and very strong, yet feminine and proportioned for her small frame. Muggers may be warned not to mess with her.

"Hi," she says. "I’m between appointments today so I hope you don’t mind that I’m doing my hair and face." Edna smiles. Her movements are graceful, fluid and they tell of the strict daily discipline demanded by and given to the passion called dance.

The Blackpool win "was a fantastic victory, one that I am over the moon about winning," she enthuses, her face shining with remembered triumph. "That has got to have been the best moment of my dancing life."

Joining the competition this year, though, is uncertain, since she and her partner may decide to try their luck in other competitions. "We can’t join every competition because that’s expensive, so we have to pick the contests we join."

A mother of three, Edna’s success in the arena of international dance sport is a victory over loss and proof that one is never too old to follow one’s star–she began her dance sport career when she was well into her 30s.

Edna was enrolled in dance classes by her mother when she was eight and took lessons in a variety of dance forms–including ballet, jazz, hip-hop and the Hawaiian hula–until she was 16. She later danced in musicals and did two contracts as a dancer in Japan, where she met her husband.

Much as she loved dance, Edna knew art was not a priority for many and a "practical" living must be made. She worked for a bank, then as an interior designer. When she got married, she became a licensed real estate broker. Still she danced when she could and earned from gigs in musicals and the like in her spare time.

Edna had three children in quick succession, so "I devoted my life to my children. I was the hands-on mother who breast-fed and changed diapers, brought them to and fetched them from school and supervised homework. My children were my life.

"I was living in Japan at the time and I did everything that had to do with child-rearing because that is the traditional Japanese way of doing things," she adds.

When her husband succumbed to cancer 13 years ago, Edna took on the role of sole parent. "I got used to doing things myself, to raising my children myself, so being a widow and single mom is not so difficult for me."

Her eldest child, a daughter, is eighteen and her youngest is entering his teens and graduating from grade school, although she does not at all look like a woman with three kids, what with her handspan waistline and a trim, young figure. "Yes, that’s one benefit of dancing–your body and mind stay young," she grins.

Dance was the farthest thing from Edna’s mind, focused as she was on being a good mother and provider for her children. But Fate, it seemed, wanted her back on the dance floor.

In 1997, Edna bumped into Dance Sport Council of the Philippines president Becky Garcia at the gym. "Becky urged me to go back to dancing and get into dance sport," Edna recalls. "I took her advice and started there."

While the rule with any dance form is to begin training young, it is never too late to learn dance or to excel in it. "You need to be determined and committed and there is no substitute for formal training," she says. "Natural talent is good, but discipline and commitment, determination and practice are what take you the distance."

Getting back on the dance floor, however, was not an easy task for Edna. She had to give up her job as a real estate broker and even now has to "juggle personal funds sometimes just to buy the costumes and dance shoes and fund participation in competitions, as well as keep training constantly."

It indeed is an expensive sport, because money is needed "to excel and to become the best dancer you can be. You need to take lessons, often abroad because, in my case, there are no world-class dance teachers specializing in the Argentine Tango here. I need to go to Europe and I hope to do so soon."

Besides performing the Argentine Tango, Edna teaches the cha-cha, rhumba, samba, jive and paso doble at a dance studio in Makati.

"Dancing is a commitment and it demands a lot of my time because I both compete and teach," she says. "But I love dance and I have committed myself to it. Because I am both teacher and performer, I’m lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a day."

To make up for lost sleep, Edna has learned the principle of the power-nap: "I take short naps, multivitamins and stretch and work out to ease the tiredness from my body."

Diet discipline also has to be enforced: "You have to eat right and stay healthy, especially when you are doing the Latin dances, which demand a fuller figure than what you see on a ballerina. I eat chicken and lots of vegetables and fruit because, when you dance at my level, you need a lot of fuel."

Her gym workouts are designed to provide maximum flexibility and tensile strength but not pump up her muscles. "A dancer must be strong, but she must also be very feminine in form because the look is as much a part of the performance as the dance is."

Back home with her children, though, "I’m still mom and my children are oblivious to my successes. My children have learned to adjust to my lifestyle as a dance sport competitor, though they don’t think much of my dancing. They have absolutely no interest in it and that is good, because then they can choose their own paths in life."

She laughs heartily as she recounts how her youngest son once asked if she was a world champion because his teachers asked him about it. "When I said yes, all he could say was ‘oh.’"

Edna speaks passionately about two subjects very close to her heart: Being a dancer in Japan and ballroom dancing as a sport rather than as a "matrona’s way of passing time."

"It is so sad that so much sordidness has been attached to performing as a dancer in Japan," she says, taking a deep breath. "What I did there was respectable and it paid well. There are many, many talented dancers who have made careers out of dance in Japan because that is a culture that still values the arts and respects artistic skill and discipline. No one in any of the audiences that watched me dance got bastos (obnoxious) with me and I do not like being called a japayuki.

"Ballroom dancing or dance sport, on the other hand, is very disciplined," she continues. "It is an exacting sport and many South American countries teach young schoolchildren how to do the Latin dances in class, and it is an intrinsic part of their education."

Instead, ballroom dancing is often seen as slightly sleazy, an activity for bored matrons who go for young DIs (dance instructors), or dimly-lit clubs where young "doktoras" (the derogatory term for female DIs) go to earn extra money from dirty old men out to paw them.

"What the public does not see is that dance, in whatever form, requires very high levels of both artistry and skill," Edna says. "Ballroom dancing, particularly the Latin dances and the Argentine Tango, are extremely demanding. If you do not practice daily, if you do not take lessons or keep your discipline, you will not dance them well."

She and her dance partner practice five to six times a week and stretch and flex daily to maintain top form. She also adds that "you and your partner have to have good chemistry, because that can be seen by the audience and it is also part of the dance."

Such chemistry, she hastens to add, "is not sexual at all. It is hard to think of sex when you are focused on how your body needs to move, on how you synchronize with your partner, on where you will put your feet."

Edna is currently even busier as she is preparing for two upcoming concerts. On March 7, Edna will present her brand of Argentine Tango in a dinner show at the Makati Sports Club to raise funds for her further training.

She is also choreographing and dancing in "Tango/La Divina" with Ballet Philippines on March 17 and 18 at the Cultural Center Main Theater, in a concert that will meld the fire and passion of Latin dance with the fine artistry of ballet and contemporary dance. For the concert, Edna is choreographing a new piece to be performed by television dance show host Lucy Torres.

The beautiful thing about dance, she adds as a footnote to the interview, "is that anybody can do it, anytime they want to. I would teach anyone who truly wants to learn ballroom or Latin dance, but they must also make their commitment to learn it well."

"Tango/La Divina" with choreographies by Edna Ledesma, Bam Damian, Alden Lugnasin and Tony Fabella goes on stage at the CCP Main Theater on March 17 (8 pm gala) and 18 (3 and 8 pm). For ticket information, call Ballet Philippines at tel 551-1003. Edna may be reached through Studio 116 (Herrera Bldg., 116 V.A. Rufino St., Legaspi Village, Makati), tel. 813-1549.