FITNESS AUTHOR
Jackie Bocanegra
ATHLETE
Spotlight
MÉLISSA PENG n Meet the founder of Pon Di Beat, Mélissa
Peng, as she shares her journey through dance that landed her and her local business.
D
ancing is a great way to get moving while enjoying and letting the music flow through your body. For Mélissa Peng, it is something she has always known. From a young age, Peng was immersed in the different dance classes which included ballet, tap, jazz and traditional West African dance classes. This is where her love for dance began. For Peng, dance has always been something that she enjoys and an integral part of her life. She has always been interested in dance and different cultural dances. “In college, I was part of a Haitian dance troupe, where we focused on Afro-Haitian dance, and a Bollywood dance group,” Peng
JANUARY 2022
says. “I went to an absolute beginners intensive Dancehall class, and it was with two women who danced with Sean Paul. That was amazing.” Since then, she has moved around from New York to Los Angeles, keeping up with dance in her life. Then, she and her husband finally decided to settle down in Austin, but something was missing in her life. “When I got to Austin, (after) the last eight years in LA and New York where we had cool access to the Afro-beat community, I found that there weren’t that many resources of dance here,” Peng says. That’s when she decided to start
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Pon Di Beat, a Round Rock-based dance company, in January 2019. “Pon Di Beat” means “on the beat” in Jamaican – the beat referring to Afro beat. In the beginning, Peng wanted
