Malaysian Day Part 2: Zapin Dance

Took me a while writing this, but I made it finally! Continuing our story from last time, the first dance we learned was the Zapin dance commonly done in the West of Peninsular Malaysia and the most popular Malay traditional dances. Legends have it, it was introduced to Malaya (Malaysia's old name) back in the fourteenth century by Persians and Arab Muslim missionaries from the Middle East. Due to the gender inequality of the time, only men were able to perform the beautiful dance but proud to say, women dancers are now finally allowed. 

Source: The Sun Daily

Both men and women move beautifully across the stage that has a deep-rooted foundation to the traditional entertainment that has graced many Sultans in the past and present, hopefully, future as well. The Zapin dance is usually accompanied by traditional musical instruments such as the Gambus, Gendang and Rebana. Due to the missionaries back then, Zapin has been introduced to not only Malaysia but also Indonesia and Singapore. Hence, creating different variations of the dance. 

Due to my lack of knowledge in teaching someone to dance, I decided to follow a few tutorials I found on Youtube and use that. To be honest, it was a mixture of a lot of Zapin dances but hey! It worked out well!

We started by showing everyone a video of the whole performance of a Zapin dance that followed the song by Malaysian sweetheart, Siti Nurhaliza.

Video here: 

Zapin Ya Maulai

Students by this point were amazed and thought they will be zipping through the classroom like professionals! But sadly, I had to burst their bubbles and they will only learn a few simple steps. We started off with a move called the Inang. We sway both our hands up and down repeatedly a few times. The followed by the Asli which is a slower version of the Inang and we move left and right on a horizontal line. Then the fun starts! We zip into the Zapin move where our right hand is held in front of us as we move forward and back in a V shape style. Hard to imagine I know!

The Inang move

The Asli move

The Zapin move

The twirl move

We finished off with my favourite of all, the one hand raised and the twirl! A classic! In all seriousness, the students loved it! We then danced while wearing the costume we made and danced to our heart's content! Next time, definitely will have more moves and have a complete performance!