Dance to Lucy's 100 Best Ballroom Hits

Lucy Torres-Gomez is open to all that life has to offer, including unplanned changes and surprises.

She never set out to be a dancer. But look at her now. She is dance floor royalty and has been dubbed Asia’s Dance Goddess.

She is still amazed over how everything, especially her dancing, seems to just fall into place. For one, unlike most daughters from affluent families, Lucy never had lessons in ballet or jazz as a child growing up in her native Leyte. “All the dancing I did was copy the moves of the dancers in TV shows,” she relates. “I had no formal training at all. In fact her first dance lesson was in the fiery Spanish dance, the Flamenco and this happened only a few years ago.

“I think it was in Cebu,” she continues. “I saw this performance of the Flamenco and I was absolutely fascinated by the big flowers that the dancers wore on their hair. I asked them if they wore those all the time and they told me, they do so whenever they dance. The flower is part of the Flamenco costume. I wanted to wear the flower so I started flamenco lessons.”

Lucy not only got to wear a big red flower in her hair, her flamenco lessons brought out the dance goddess, that unknown to her, had been waiting to take her first steps out for years. Eventually, her flamenco dancing also led to an entirely new career as a dancer and host of the country’s most popular reality dance show, Shall We Dance? on TV5. Now I have yet to see her stomping to the beat of the flamenco in the show, but she pretty much dances to everything now.

“I love to dance,” she continues. “It is fun and very good exercise. Then there is the show where I have to dance to almost anything every week. What I find really difficult to do though is hip-hop. I did it for the show and I couldn’t believe how hard it was. Some dancers make it look so easy. Iba yatang klaseng buto ang kailangan nuon. Cha cha is also a difficult dance. If you want to do it right, it is not anything like the martsa-martsa you see around. Mahirap din siya.

“I like the samba and the rumba best. These are easy to do and very graceful. I also like it when they put a rhythm to popular songs and you can dance to them. I am an old songs person. I love the standards. I listen to Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook all the time. I have his CDs in the car. So I also like to be able to dance to my favorites like Moon River and Sunflower.

Given her excellent reputation as a dancer, it is not surprising that Polyeast Records invited Lucy to be the face of the album Best 100 Ballroom Hits. This is an all-instrumental four-CD pack that is the No. 1 selling dance record in Japan. It features arrangements of all-time favorites by Munehiro Okuda performed by the Blue Sky Dance Orchestra.

“I was very flattered and very honored to be asked,” says Lucy. “I really wanted to be involved in every step of making the CD. But it came from Japan complete. Medyo disappointed ako but I was also glad to find out that a lot of my favorites are included and there is no hip-hop. So because I like it, I can recommend it to everybody. This is what ballroom dancers should use when they want nonstop dancing. You just play the CDs and you get everything.”

Some of the 100 tunes included in the album are: CD One. Brazil, Besame Mucho, Perfidia, Siboney, La Cumparsita, El Bimbo, Tico Tico, Adios, A Media Luz, Quizas Quizas Quizas and Hernando’s Hideaway.

CD Two. As Time Goes By, Autumn Leaves, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Star Dust, Misty, Begin The Beguine, My Funny Valentine, Moonlight Serenade and In The Mood.

CD Three. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, Love Story, Sunflower, Moon River, More, Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, The Way We Were and Never On Sunday.

CD Four. Too Young, From Russia With Love, Rock Around the Clock, Born Free, Fascination, September Song, Hello Dolly, Last Waltz and Save The Last Dance For Me.