Guest Blogger, Ghaz, discusses popular dancers and dance groups of the late 50s and early 60s

Ghaz writes: 

"In general, the dancers usually dance in rhythm with A-Go-Go beat.

Actually, I don't have enough details on the dancers. For the list of dance groups, I suggest that you refer to the opening credit of the film A-Go-Go 67 as their names appeared on the footage.

But I do aware that The Young Lovers comes with both the band and the dancers.

Meanwhile, the Malay film industry in earlier days use to have professional choreographers. One of them that I came across in the film was Edith Castillo. The Castillos family members were also film actors, among them include Don Castillo (active in 1930s) and a child star named Tony Castillo (between 1956 and 1958).

Then came the actress Normadiah (her pre-Islamic name was Edith Sumampauw) who was also good at dancing and used to create the dancing steps for the movies, particularly those based on ancient Malay epic themes.

In the early 1970s, another actress, Saadiah, also had her own dancing troupe called Saadiah's Dancers, which featured, among others, her own nephew, another child-star named Bat Latiff [1953 - 2006].

When Bat grew older, he set up his own dancing troup called Bat Latiff's Dancers. He also had another troup specially for children called Anak-Anak Belalang, named after his character Belalang which he played as in P. Ramlee's film Nujum Pak Belalang in 1959. (Of course Ramlee acted as Belalangs father named Pak Belalang ... hehehe!)

A little trivia - Anita Sarawak and her elder half-sister Murni (from the same mother, actress Siput Sarawak) also used to be A-Go-Go dancers, too, either on films or on stage.

Siput (her actual name is Ramlah Dollah, daughter of veteran actor Dollah Sarawak) also used to dance in opera troup circa 1930s till late 1940s, just before the Shaw Brothers' studio in Singapore's Jalan Ampas be reorganized after the World War 2, where she was later admited into film arena in 1947. She got her stage name Siput (Snail) after an opera troop called Siput Kuyong based in Sarawak during her childhood days."


Thanks again to Ghaz for sharing this rare and valuable information!! 


here is some pre-a go go dancing called Joget.... 


Joget "Go To Hell" - filmed at SB Jalan Ampas Studios Singapore featuring Normadia and Omar Suwita