Nicholas Teo: I danced like a ‘dead fish’!

Malaysian singer Nicholas Teo sheds his ‘Prince of ballads’ image to take on a more challenging role of dancing for his concert tour. Did you know that the ‘Prince’ was a flop at dancing’

Text: Teo Jing Ting
Editorial team: Dion Tang

Malaysian singer Nicholas Teo is holding his first concert tour and Singapore is his third stop, following Kuala Lumpur and Indonesia. His concert was also how he envisioned it to be. While he wants to do his best, he does not want to rush it all at once.

‘If I perform too much stuff like drumming or playing the piano, then the concert will look more like a circus instead,’ explained Nicholas.

Evidently, the pressure is on him as he even compared himself to established concert performers like Jay Chou and Wang Lee Hom.

‘They are originally talented, but I’m not,’ said Nicholas. ‘I need time to learn all these and I wish to take my time.’

Alright, fans would just have to be contented with his groovy new dance moves. True to his words, the prince did need plenty of time to learn, admitting that he faced lots of difficulties when learning the moves, as he started from scratch.

‘When I first started, it was terrible, everything I did was wrong!’ said Nicholas. ‘Thank goodness that my instructor was a patient person!’

Yet, just he started to get his moves right, his expression was wrong. In fact, there was no expression on his face, just like a dead fish! He was concentrating so hard on his steps that he totally forgot about his expression!

‘So my instructor advised me to imagine that I was sitting in a pub and listening to music and let my emotions flow,’ laughed Nicholas. ‘I’m much better now though.’

Indeed, he has since improved. In fact, his fans and the media from KL praised his dancing and even said he was ‘good-looking’ when he danced.

‘Wow! My confidence went up a notch after that!’ said Nicholas.

Now that he has conquered the dance moves, would he be moving on to a sexier route, such as ripping off his shirts’

Much as he entertained the idea, the prince said that he would not do it as he had to be considerate of some of his fans, who are as young as three. Thus, he had to maintain a ‘parental guidance’ standard.

Nicholas also revealed that he once did perform a sexy dance in Taiwan, cuddling up to his female dancers on stage but his fans did not take too well to his performance, so he decided to scrap the idea.

Apparently, there were fans from Japan, Korea and Hong Kong who flew all the way to KL to attend his concert. Not to disappoint his fans, he sang in five different languages other than Mandarin ‘ Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, English and Cantonese. In an interview, the prince said that he memorized the words of the songs by writing down the pronunciations. To him, it was akin to doing his homework, but no matter how tough, he carried on as he felt responsible to his fans.

‘They flew to attend my concert, and this is the least I could do to express my gratitude to them,’ said Nicholas. ‘When I sang in Japanese, my fans from Japan started crying. Just the song itself made them felt that their trip was worthwhile.’

Having been in the entertainment scene for five years, we asked what his biggest change was. Other than having clearer goals, Nicholas said that the biggest change in him was that he has become a better listener.

‘I used to be a talkative person and I would tend to dominate the conversation whenever I am with my friends,’ he said. ‘However, now my job requires me to talk non-stop such as the case in press conferences and interviews, I hardly talk anymore.’

‘Thus, when I hang out with my friends, I become a listener, and I realised that I have gained a lot more by listening to them talk,’ added Nicholas. ‘I guess that this is a good change.’

The singer, who is currently based in Taiwan, admits that he still unconsciously adds some ‘local flavour’ into his speech when conversing with the Taiwanese.

‘Sometimes, I would forget and say words like ‘alamak’ and ’sekali’ when I’m speaking to them,’ admitted Nicholas. ‘But I would make an effort to tune my speech to the Taiwanese version.’

‘But the moment I come back to Malaysia and Singapore, I become more relaxed and so does my speech. It will become a mixed version of Mandarin, with English and Malay popping up once in a while,’ laughed Nicholas.

Spoken like a true Malaysian. Catch Nicholas’ concert on 31st May, 8pm, at the Suntec Convention Hall 6.

What can Singapore fans expect from Nicholas’ concert:

-His guest performer this time is Faye of Taiwanese band, F.I.R. He would be performing a classic duet with her.
-Feeling that his performance in KL was not long enough, he is pushing for more songs to be sung in Singapore. However, at press time, no details of the discussion are available.
-His backup dancers are all males, as he wants to portray a more manly performance.
-He will perform various dance numbers, including disco, waltz and the chair dance.