If you enjoy dancing to Korean Pop music, then K-Pop Dance Club may be the perfect club for you. Members meet every Monday after school in the dance studio, located outside of the Black Box Theater in Kulp building, to rehearse choreography for primarily Korean songs. K-Pop Dance Club performs at pep rallies, local festivals, and as of last month, concerts.
On April 27 and 28, K-Pop Dance Club hosted its first dance recitals in the Black Box Theater. Both shows had a full house, with tickets being sold at $2 a piece; people crowded on the floor and against the walls to view the performance. The concert featured different styles of music including Korean pop and rap, and even a performance of the hit “Bang Bang” originally sung by English singer Jessie J. The hour-long event also had an intermission with food to purchase, and ended with raffles where the handful of winners were based on the number stamped onto the audience member’s ticket.
According to Hasnaa Fardoussi, a member of K-Pop Dance Club, the group chose all the songs they performed, and some members learned certain songs from scratch while others already knew some of the dances from previous K-pop performances around the community. Fardoussi added, “I wanted to join K-Pop Dance Club because K-pop is amazing and people in the club can sing and dance.”
Shuah Jang, a senior member of K-Pop Dance Club, explained the roots behind the club, which she founded with a friend almost three years ago. “We were inspired by Ithaca College’s Pan Asian American Film Festival, where a professor in charge of planning invited me to gather a group of people to perform a K-Pop dance. It was so much fun that my friend and I decided to create a club.”
According to Jang, Cynthia Chen, another senior in the club, was very enthusiastic about having a K-Pop concert before they graduated, saying, “At first I didn’t think it would be possible, but once the ball started rolling and we asked Mr. Mellander about the details, it happened!” As for the rehearsal process, Jang called it “difficult” but said members were “self-motivated” for getting together over the weekends to practice their choreography at the Just Be Cause Center (JBC), where they have full walls of mirrors. Jang concluded, “K-Pop Dance Club has grown so much in the past three years, since it started with less than five people, and has now grown to a solid fifteen people coming every Monday to dance with us. Plus, school doesn’t have many performance groups, so I hope K-Pop Dance Club makes school events more fun for everyone. If people want to join us, our doors are always open.”
If you are interested in joining K-Pop Dance Club, contact the club’s advisor Barbra Bergman, or stop by the dance studio after school on Mondays.