Just a handful of couples remained swaying underneath darkened and purple hued overhead lights by the end of Friday afternoon’s tea dance, leaving most of the floor at Lai Lai Ballroom and Studio empty and exposed.
At one time, only a few years ago, between 70 and 100 seniors from across the San Gabriel Valley’s diverse Asian diaspora would pack the dance floor for hours at the casual social event only to return in the evening for the night dance party.
Now just two weeks since the massacre at Star Ballroom Dance Studio in nearby Monterey Park and the thwarted shooting at Lai Lai, the business has restarted some of its programming but still struggles to get back to business as usual.
Following the Jan. 21 shooting, which killed 11 people and injured nine others, Lai Lai, which translated roughly to “come in,” or “welcome,” closed its doors for one week. The following Sunday it resumed its open floor time — instructors rent out the space for classes in the morning — and its afternoon tea dance, a three-hour social dance mixing a variety of music and styles.
Brenda Tsay, who runs the business with her brother and father, said they wanted to reopen quickly, partly out of a perceived responsibility to the dance community the studio cultivated over its 30 years as a “mother studio” to so many dancers. Particularly with the future of the Star Dance still up in the air, she wanted to make sure their overlapping clients still had a home.
“Dancing is a really important part of their lives, especially because a lot of them are older, they’re retired and maybe their kids are starting their own lives,” Tsay said. “They don’t have much to do but invest in themselves and use the time they have left on Earth to enjoy themselves, and dancing is how they do that.”
Liya Kazbekova taught Latin American dance in 15- to 30-people groups at Lai Lai and Star Dance for the last four years, and said most of her clients at both studios were regulars that…
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