I originally wrote this article “Farewell to a Tango Dancer” in 2003 for a farewell dinner for Anni Nordmann before she left Penang, Malaysia where I first met her, and later published a revised version for Tropical Affairs. Having learned that she had recently passed away due to cancer, I thought I would post the article as a final tribute to Anni.
After
being away from the
Like
Anni, when I came to
Although I moved to Penang in 1985, Anni came in 1987 with her Swiss husband and three-year old son, Chris. Later we discovered that before we met, our paths had crossed several times. Anni was living in Holiday Inn, where her husband was the general manager, and I had been to the Holiday Inn on many occasions, attending various functions, including a Thanksgiving dinner for Americans where she was also present. My ex-wife and I were close to Stella, Holiday Inn’s guest relations officer, and attended her wedding, as did Anni. In 1991, after four years, after Anni had already left Holiday Inn, after her husband had moved away to another hotel in another country, we finally met.
During the filming of Indochine, starring Catherine Deneuve and Vincent Perez, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the director decided to do a day shoot instead of a night shoot for the Christmas Dinner scene, thus several male expats had to back out as guests and tango dancers. So the casting people called me as one of the replacements.
Before the actual filming of the scene, all eight tango dancers met in Hotel Equatorial with the film’s choreographer. In walked Anni, a classy looking American who played polo and taught horseback riding. Anni, however, was not fated to be my dancing partner. Instead it was her good friend Joelle Saint-Arnoult, another longtime expat from France. For one week we learned how to dance and turn and dip to perfection.
Our Christmas Dinner scene in the old Crag Hotel atop Penang Hill took four days to shoot. Elegantly dressed in period outfits from the 1930s, Anni sat directly across from me, so we had plenty of time to get to know one another. A few weeks later, Anni, Joelle and I were invited to take part in the racing boat scene in Parit, Perak.
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| with Lind Dan Pham |
After Indochine, all three of us were extras in Beyond Rangoon—also set in Penang—directed by John Boorman, starring Patricia Arquette and Francis McDormand, and Paradise Road, directed by Bruce Beresford, starring Glenn Close and Cate Blanchett. In Beyond Rangoon, Anni and I worked a few days in wardrobe when they needed extra help to deal with 2000 extras, where we gained a whole new perspective into movie making.
In 1992, Anni, Joelle and I were asked by Angela Clark another tango dancer from Indochine, to help revive Penang Players after a twelve years hiatus. Our first play was Admirable Crichton where Joelle and Anni had small acting parts. Anni’s big part was sound effects, and I was stage manager. Our behind-the-scenes roles continued for several productions including, Gosforth’s Fete, Between Mouthfuls, The Mousetrap, and Dick Whittington and Wonder Cat. Joelle played the Wonder Cat and Anni’s son Chris, then age 10, played Dick Whittington.
During this time, Anni and I shared other adventures, too. She helped to dress me up as Santa Claus for St. Christopher’s School, where her son Chris was attending. Thanks to Indochine, we became models for Hotel Equatorial, City Bayview, and Bacchus, a French restaurant owned by Joelle and her husband. We were then hired to dress up as Colonial Officers and their spouses at the E & O Hotel for 200 French Lotto winners.
For the
Penang Heritage Trust’s Twenties Revival at the former Runnymede Hotel, we were
asked to reprise our roles as tango dancers from Indochine and put on a
performance. By then, the eight tango
dancers in
Anni and
I shared a penchant for visiting places where we didn’t belong, like the
remnants of a house in Batu Ferringhi where another long-term expat-cum hermit
named Bill McVeigh was still living out the remainder of his life before he
passed away. We snuck into several abandoned
bungalows, including one where we were chased by bats, and another time, I tore
my shirt slipping through a hole in a fence.
In the
last five years, Anni devoted herself to “The Farm” at Lone Pine Hotel, where
she taught horseback riding, resurfacing now and then to do the sound for yet
another Penang Players’ production.
Meanwhile I settled to a life teaching creative writing at USM, went
through a divorce, and eventually met someone wonderful from
While I concentrated on teaching and my own writing, Anni offered to read an early draft of my novel and gave helpful feedback. Over the years she had edited two more of my novels and some short stories. Extremely supportive of my writing, she, Joelle and others from Penang Players volunteered to launch my collection of Malaysian-set short stories, Lovers and Strangers. Later they did again for the revised version, Lovers and Strangers Revisited. By then Anni had left, although I acknowledged her in the book.
When Joelle first told me that Anni was leaving Penang, I contacted her and we quickly caught up with each other’s lives, reminiscing about all the adventures we had shared in Penang, as well as airing each other’s concerns about her returning to the US and her future life as a former expat whose heart will always be in Malaysia where she had spent a third of her life. When I was going through a difficult custody battle for my son, she gave me the timely advice to “keep your head high”. I know she will be do the same no matter what happens in the US where many fellow Americans have never traveled out of the US, other than weekend trips to Mexico or Canada, and have no desire to do so.
Like
many other short- and long-term expats in Penang, as well as hordes of local
friends, especially those in Penang Players or from The Lone Pine—we will miss
Anni, particularly Joelle and I, who will remain behind in Penang as the last
two tango dancers.
