Lau Shuk Ling - Passionate Hong Kong Art (Oriental Dance) Educator 刘淑龄－ 香港舞蹈藝術教育家

她有一颗单纯的心。舞蹈藝術教育是她的生命。她爱学生，她爱美，她喜欢和我分享她的设计.......

  Her most beloved photo on the wall of her kitchen. 

Her home was a mini museum with all collections of figurines in artistic postures. 

The arrangement was her choreography. 

I was very much honoured to be her friend and admirer. 

She was Hong Kong history - the history of creative performing arts education. 

"I came from Guangzhou. I learned dance in an art institute. Then I came to Hong Kong and taught in New Method College. I did this one-thousand student parade. I am proud of it."

"One day, Mrs Wong came to a dance competition where my students performed." 

"She approached me herself and invited me to join her school." 

"She highly respected me and allowed me full autonomy." 

"It is not easy to get the boys to join the dance. I got Mrs. Wong's full support to make all the boys  learn dancing during PE lessons. I chose the boys who had potentials to be good dancers and trained them hard." 

"The school teams represented Hong Kong and performed in Tokyo, Canada, and the UK. We won so many competitions!" 

"Actually we earned a lot of money for the school. We were paid honorarium for performing on various occasions for different organisations and events." 

"I love collecting pictures of costumes and information of dances. I got the ideas and then designed the costumes for my dancers and the choreography." 

"I love dancing and teaching dancing all my life." 

It has been more than two years since I had this conversation with her at her fancy home. I remember inviting her to the quarters twice and she was very delighted to see my oil portrait and knew that I loved art. She offered to teach me social dance and gave me a full set of dance dress- a red top and black skirt for tango and waltz, which I could never do.

It was painful for her to hand over the dance team to a young lady coach. Despite her foot pain, she insisted coming back to see the practices and advise her successor the choreography. To her delight, the dance team, comprising girls mostly newly recruited from form one and two, won a silver award in their first competition.

I always feel close to her. There has been a connection - shared love for students, and passion for education and art.

I owed her a visit and an article which I promised. 

I wish some alumni will take action and secure a place for her in the future Hong Kong Museum of Performing Arts. 


My deepest gratitude to Mr Chow Chi, Ms Lau's son, for allowing me to take photos and publish the article here.