"DOMMARINA"

O nosso grupo tem o nome de DOMMARINA, uma combinacao de dois nomes: o nome do meu marido Dominic e Marina, que comecou depois de ensinar alguns alunos. Começamos com a minha família, o meu irmão, a minha irmã, a sua família e alguns dos nossos amigos. No início dancavamos apenas o folclore como dança tradicional mas agora temos também música ao vivo. O meu grupo e composto por cerca de vinte pessoas. Levou cerca de 3 meses de prática antes de começarmos a dancar em público. Temos sido convidados para actuar para o Governo de Malacca e também para algumas ONG's. Temos participado em festivais no Estado de Malacca e em outras cidades consideradas Património Mundial no âmbito da UNESCO.

Our group is called DOMMARINA a combination of two names my husband DOMINIC and mine MARINA as said it began after we finish the the event with the students.

We started with my family and my brother, my sister and her family and a few of our friends.
In the beginning we started with just dancing the folk dance and the traditional dance. But now we also have life music and singing too. My group consist of about twenty people. It took only about 3 months of practice before we started to perform in public I We have perform for many functions for the state goverment and also with NGO's.
We have taken part in funtions in the state of Malacca inconjuntion with Malacca as one of the world Heritage city under the UNESCO. Coming back to DomMarina we are one of a group that represent the Portuguese community of Portuguese Settlement, Malacca Malaysia.

How it all began - como tudo comecou

I love the portuguese culture dance and music ever since I was young. I started to learn the portuguese dance at the age of 12 and started dancing with a group at the age of 13. I travel to many states in Malaysia to perform I also went to Singapore and to Macau. I met my husband who was dancing with the same group. I married at the age of 21 and left dancing when I had my second child after 16 years of dancing. After some time my husband and I was ask to teach a few other parties which was interested in forming a Portuguese folk dance group teenagers, children and also a veteran group which we did with success.

In 2007 my husband and I had an opportunity to start our very own cultural group after we became instructors for a big program which involve teaching Portuguese folk dancing to about 100 students.