DURING the 2009 Malaysian National Figure Skating Championship, 17-year-old Annice Teo Ann Lyn transformed herself into a different character: a free spirit skating to Discombobulate by Hans Zimmer with relaxed aplomb in her long programme.
Moving with a steady swiftness, yet seeming to melt into the music at every opportunity — not easy in an ice rink where musical notes can sound like rain hitting tin — she abandoned herself to speed and poise to attain a state of grace.
That was to be her swan song as a figure skater.
Less than a decade later, Teo found herself at the prestigious 2018 Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea. The excitement rippling in the air; the bustle of skaters getting ready for their glorious moment on ice; the sequined costumes glinting in the lights; the music and the breathtaking spins as skaters perform their well-choreographed routines — Teo was familiar with them all.
Only this time there wasn't a pair of skates on her feet. Instead, a camera was held firmly in her hands, capturing these moments on film.
Teo was the first female photographer based in Malaysia to be accredited for the XXIII Olympic Winter Games.
"It was a bittersweet moment," she admits to me, smiling. "I knew because I started so late, and coupled with injuries I obtained over the years, I knew I'd never be able to reach the levels I'd hoped for. But to be there at the Olympics was a surreal moment. It brought back all kinds of memories."
It wasn't the journey Teo had planned.
Having "wandered" into photography via her architecture studies at University College Sedaya International (USCI), KL-born Teo never imagined it'd lead to a vocation that she'd invest her life in.
Her childhood passion in figure skating eventually led to her purpose.
"I figured that photography is a calling. There could be no other explanations how things fell into place once I picked up the camera," she muses.
Her "calling" is obvious. After all, Teo's photographic work went on to be featured on international platforms including Forbes, Associated Press, AFP, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian and the Olympic NBC Sports.
Teo is Canon EOS' youth ambassador and has recently won the prestigious Women of the Future (WOF) Awards Southeast Asia 2020, a platform that recognises remarkable female talents across diverse sectors around the region.
SKATING BACK IN TIME
And it began with the sport she fell in love with, when she was just 13. It was a compromise with her mother, she admits freely.
"My mother wanted me to be a ballerina, but I wasn't interested in donning the tutu!"
She laughs, before adding: "I figured figure skating would be a great compromise."
The eldest in her family of four siblings, Teo and her younger brother took up figure skating.
"I fell in love with the sport from get go," she recalls. There is always a kind of freedom found in discipline, and, like a daily ballet barre for a dancer, figure skating embodied the essence of what a blade could achieve on the ice.
"The breeze in my hair, I felt like I was flying!" she recounts, eyes misty.
She was a late bloomer. Most figure skaters would have already taken to the sport when they were 5 or 6 years old. But her gymnastic background helped, she says. "Figure skating is a discipline that combines technicality and artistry. On top of all of that, we have to make it look easy!"
Yet there's always a kind of freedom found in discipline, and, like a daily ballet barre for a dancer, figure skating embodied the essence of what a blade could achieve on the ice.
"So it was the perfect compromise. I still got to be the graceful dancer my mother envisioned!' she quips, chuckling.
She and her brother would head to Sunway Pyramid early in the mornings for practice. "That was the only rink available to us at that time," she recounts.
With the breeze in her hair, her Sony Ericsson headphones tucked in her ears, Teo enjoyed the quiet moments skating around the empty rink.
"I enjoyed those moments," she says softly. But the sport was challenging in many ways. It takes years, she points out, of hard work, countless of training hours and perseverance.
"One thing figure skating taught me was that no matter how hard you fall, you get up lor!" she remarks, smiling. "I know that sounds so cliche but it really is what it is!"
Her brother soon dropped out because he didn't think figure skating was "masculine" enough, Teo tells me grinning. She eventually moved on to competitive levels a mere two years after being introduced to the sport. But there were challenges up ahead.
"The only rink available at that time was small and not the Olympic size we compete in," she says.
It also took a lot of sacrifice by her parents to support her dream of becoming a competition-level skater.
"I really loved figure skating but it remains a challenge to pursue it in a tropical equatorial country like Malaysia," she admits. "It isn't an economically-friendly sport."
They had to book private ice time, pay coaches compensation for extra attention, invest in costumes and countless of doctors' appointments.
A series of injuries culminating in an accident where she crashed against another skater in the rink got her thinking hard.
"I realised that I wasn't going to be able to move further as a competitor. I had two dislocated knees and I was getting older. The window of competing at international events was getting smaller," she says wistfully.
The sacrifices her parents put in the sport couldn't be discounted either.
"I decided to retire at the age of 19," she says simply. "I realised I wouldn't be able to move ahead with my dreams and it wasn't worth the sacrifices my parents put in anymore."
GIVING BACK
Sacrifices and giving back are traits Teo grew up with. Her parents founded Rumah Charis, a welfare organisation comprising a children's home and an old folks' home.
"I grew up with a whole load of 'grandparents'" she recalls, laughing.
The elderly community at the home adopted Teo, and she recounts how they treated her like a princess at the home.
"Every Sunday after church, my parents would head back to the home with me at the back of the van fast asleep. They'd put me in one of the rooms and the 'grandpas' and 'grandmas' would dote on me," she says fondly.
Some of the children at the home remains Teo's closest friends to this day. This was the life she was used to, growing up. She tells me with pride of the time she received a wedding invitation from one of the childhood friends she befriended at the home.
"She finally got to have a family she never had growing up," she says.
On Teo's birthday, her friend sent her a sonogram of her baby with the message: "Happy birthday… you're finally going to be an aunt!" That, Teo reveals, touched her deeply.
As cliched as it sounds, social work was something Teo was naturally just drawn to. She never actively set out to walk in her parents' footsteps but she always believed in the values they taught her.
After all, she saw how her parents availed themselves to people in need, to provide support to those who had nowhere else to turn.
Teo took on the role of a Social Project coordinator at the foundation her father started.
"I'm absolutely certain that my commitment as a young person is to treating people equally and try to ensure people are not made to feel inferior," she says emphatically, adding simply: "My father taught me that."
FLYING HIGH
Her interest in science and art got her studying architecture at a local university.
"My father was so proud when I graduated," she recounts, chuckling. "Finally… an architect in the family, although I never went on to take the licence to practise as one!"
For her projects, Teo had to pick up the camera and take images of her work.
"During our projects, we had to be the COE (chief of everything)!" she says. "We didn't just come up with designs but we had to brand and sell our designs as well." That meant taking photos and showcasing her designs in the best possible light.
That's when photography came in. After graduating, Teo started experimenting with photography.
"I fell in love with photography during my studies, and I slowly taught myself how to work a camera."
A more personal pursuit fell into place when her twin sisters were born.
"When I was growing up, there weren't many pictures documenting me and my brother. My mum wanted photos of sisters and I obliged. I wanted to document their growing up years from infancy, and as the years went by, my photos got better!" she shares candidly. Eventually, friends and family members started asking her to take pictures of their special events.
But Teo's heart still remained in figure skating. The skating fraternity was small and Teo had always kept in touch with both the students and coaches. She soon realised that she could contribute in a small way.
"When I was a skater, there weren't many pictures of me in the rink especially at competition levels," she says regretfully, adding: "We had to pay a princely sum to obtain a picture of ourselves from the photographers there, and they weren't usually of great quality."
It was so disheartening, she confesses. "We worked so hard at our performance, and what we got were just a bunch of photos (which we paid for) that were blurred and didn't represent that blood, sweat and tears we put in."
She eventually spoke to her former coach and volunteered her services as a photographer.
"Why don't I take pictures of your students?" she asked, and he agreed. So Teo went along and captured images of figure-skaters at competitions.
"I used a basic camera but managed to get the results I wanted."
Her images offered a rare glimpse into the world of figure skating — something that was never done before.
Another personal reason was Julian Yee Zhi-Jie, one of Malaysia's national figure skaters who was the first Malaysian to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics in the Men's Figure Skating category.
"Julian was the product of the Sunway Pyramid days like the rest of us senior skaters," says Teo.
As she was photographing the team in all major events, she noticed that Julian featured a lot in her photographs.
"His was a familiar face in the circuit. His mother soon approached me to ask if I could photograph her son as he progressed in competitions."
Teo attributes Julian's mother for pushing her to excel.
"I documented Julian's progress from his training days, national days, SEA Games, Four Continents Championship in Taipei, and the Olympics was the final piece in the puzzle that I wanted to complete," she shares, adding: "I wrote in to the Olympics Committee to ask if I could be the official photographer for the Malaysian team, given the fact that it was the first time in history that a Malaysian qualified for the event."
They agreed. Teo became the only female accredited photographer from Malaysia accompanying the Ice-Skating Association of Malaysia to the 2018 Olympic Winter Games. And the rest was history.
She soon moved into photography full-time. "My father isn't happy about it," she admits with a laugh.
"He thinks that I should have a more secure job. But my mum always told me that nothing is impossible."
This year, Teo co-founded Women Photographers Malaysia, a platform that support women photographers and creating a community of empowered women who break barriers.
"I didn't set out to have a feminist agenda," explains Teo. "It was more that my interest in making work about women comes from the simple fact that I'm one. That commonality of experience is at the heart of what I do as an artist."
Concluding, she says: "I'll always remember what my mother constantly tells me, 'If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't lor!'".
For Annice Teo, figure skating may not be an art, but in such moments, it's also not about winning: it's about flying. Armed with a camera instead of a pair of skates, she's doing exactly that.