SINGAPORE – A team from Lasalle College of the Arts has received honours at a dance competition held in Yokohama, Japan.

Dance lecturer Fairul Zahid won the Masdanza Prize for choreography at the 28th Yokohama Dance Collection (YDC) earlier in December for his piece Sopan. It was performed by Jocelyn Tay Mei Xuan and Natasha Koo Jing Yi, both 20, who are in the diploma in dance programme at Lasalle’s School of Dance and Theatre.

YDC is an annual contemporary dance festival. This year, it received 121 submissions from 14 countries and regions, with 18 groups selected through a video and document screening process. The winners were picked during the performance screening from Dec 1 to 4.

The performance in Yokohama marked the world premiere of Sopan.

Mr Fairul, 34, tells The Straits Times in an e-mail: “This choreography attempts to review the current status of Malay women in Peninsular Malaysia by examining the impact of Islamic revivalism and industrialisation on the Malay family, kinship and marriage system.”

In their citation, he notes, the judges had highlighted “the level of maturity of the dancers (as having made) the choreography stronger”.