A celebration of life was held on Saturday for Lorita Leung, who died on March 5 at the age of 85 and was considered an imposing figure in the Chinese dance field in Canada.
The Leung’s homonymous dance academy was founded in Vancouver in 1970, and now is based in Richmond. His daughter Jessica Jone said she was the first of her kind in BC and Canada.
The dance instructor was born in Shanghai in 1940, and his daughter said his mother grew up wanting to dance. He spent time in Hong Kong working as a choreographer for a television station in the 1960s before coming to BC to be with her husband born in Vancouver.
Jone, who is now the artistic director of the Dance Academy, said he grew from humble beginnings. His mother began the academy outside his basement in Chinatown while teaching at Good Shepherd Church in Vancouver.
“She really was the first to bring Chinese dance to our province,” Jone told CBC News.
“Now, of course, we are blessed with so many students and different opportunities for Chinese dance, but in reality, when it began in 1970, very little was known about the form of art and culture.”
According to the Academy’s website, it was the first Chinese dance group abroad in being invited to act in the People’s Republic in 1984, and has had numerous performances throughout Canada.
Leung received the 125th anniversary of the Canada Confederation Medal in 1992, and was also recognized by the Vancouver Park Board for its contributions to the arts in 2012.
Jone said that more than 200 people attended the celebration of their mother’s life on Saturday, many of whom were students who had not seen for decades.
“It was so moving to hear how people told me that I would feed them and, you know, friends who told me that I had cooked them when they were sick or that they had just had a baby,” he said.
“She was not just a dance teacher. She really was a very humanistic, kind and great leader.”
Jone said her mother advised her in dance since she was two years old, and some of her best memories were to work with her mother and father Norm in shows in Vancouver.
“I remember that the Showboat Kitsilano is one of our great performances every summer,” he said.
“Only to have my mother behind the stage and me on stage and my father like MC, it was an incredible way to grow and share that as a family.”
Jone said his mother died peacefully as he slept. He is survived by a grandson and his daughter and son -in -law, who now hope to carry out his legacy at the Dance Academy.
