#trending: Father-daughter dance at competition goes viral, viewers say it made them cry or think of their own dads

SINGAPORE — A TikTok video of a father who danced with his daughter at a recent competition went viral, with viewers applauding the parent for his effort and talking about bonding with their fathers or the lack of it. 
Mr Jay Sng, 43, posted the video on his TikTok account on Sept 7 showing the pair’s routine at the 25th Singapore Regional Competition on Sept 5.
The contest was organised by The Commonwealth Society of Teachers of Dancing Singapore and held at Anglo-Chinese Junior College’s Faith Centre for Performing Arts.
As of Monday (Sept 16), the video has amassed more than 465,000 views and 1,500 comments.
In it, Mr Sng and seven-year-old Jaylee dance to the song A Whole New World from the Disney animated movie Aladdin.
On stage, he swings her as she holds a dance pose, flips her onto his shoulder and twirls her around. Both perform a couple of cartwheels together as well as audience members cheer and squeal.
There are also a few comedic moments that got the crowd laughing. 
Mr Sng, who is a physical education teacher at a primary school, got into this competition quite by chance.
He stood in as Jaylee’s dance partner, who was sick during an earlier training at Sissonne Dance Art, a dance school.
After witnessing the special connection between Mr Sng and Jaylee, Mr Sng’s wife as well as the principal of the dance school enrolled both of them in the competition.
In an interview with TODAY, Mr Sng said that they chose to choreograph dance moves to A Whole New World because it is his wife’s favourite song.
He added that he interpreted the song as him taking his “princess on a journey” to show her “how wonderful the world is”.
At a deeper level, Mr Sng lost his father at the age of 21 and experienced the emptiness that a child could have without a father.
So he was determined to do this with his daughter because he knew that there would be a recording of it and Jaylee could look back at this.
In the comments section of the video, he wrote: “I told her before that should I leave this world suddenly, remember daddy will always be dancing with you in your heart. She teared after that!”
In the lead-up to the competition, the pair trained for seven weeks at the dance school.
With no experience as a stage dancer, Mr Sng told TODAY that he pulled his neck and shoulder muscles every week.
He had to apply copious amounts of ointment to recover from the pain before repeating the process in the next rehearsal.
In the end, they won a “special mention” medal, he said, and they were also the oldest and youngest participants in the open category.
While they were exiting the stage, they had difficulties reaching the dressing room because the backstage was swarmed with curious onlookers who gathered behind the curtains to watch them dance.
The other competitors congratulated the pair and “felt that it was very moving” because seeing the father and daughter performing together “connected” with them, Mr Sng told TODAY.
When he asked Jaylee to rank on a scale of zero to 10 how happy she was that they got the chance to perform together, he said that she jumped up and exclaimed “1,000”.
Many of her friends also asked if she was afraid of falling when Mr Sng swung her around, but she told her friends confidently that her father would “never let (her) fall”.
People who watched the video commended Mr Sng for making the effort to bond with his daughter this way and for giving her a memory that is “precious” and “amazing”.
One comment read: “Jay, you healed every girl’s heart on TikTok right now who didn’t have a bond like this.”
Another viewer wrote that she had danced for 17 years but her father never even went once to watch her perform.
Others said that they got emotional watching it, with one person adding: “Made me cry in the morning. She is so graceful and dad did such an amazing job learning the choreo(graphy)!”
Mr Sng said that he was overwhelmed by the unexpected responses.
“It started out as a simple post to share our love of dance. But a trickle became a torrent of support for parental love!”
When asked if he would continue to perform with Jaylee in the future, Mr Sng told TODAY that they have been invited to put on a show for fellow residents at the constituency where they live.
To all parents, Mr Sng advised them to “cherish the time you spend with your children, because every moment together is a whole new world”.