Do you ever get super excited for something, and then it doesn’t turn out great? That was me tonight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you have talked to me at ALL in the past year, you know that I’ve fallen down the k-pop hole. All day, every day, I listen and watch dance. It’s re-ignited my love of dance and choreography. I’ve gone back to Zumba and I am trying different classes at Alchemy of Movement<\/a> in Boulder. I’ve been looking for a k-pop dance class for over a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, I found one. I was reading a random Colorado k-pop fan blog, who had a calendar with a “k-pop dance class” listed on Thursdays. I followed the link and sure enough, it looked like exactly what I wanted! They seemed to be learning the chorus choreo for all the recent songs that I loved! Deja Vu, Rock With You, Fever, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote to the studio to ask if they announce what they are teaching each week. Since it’s a 40 minute drive to East Colfax during rush hour, I wanted to sure it was a song I liked (I’m still mostly a boy group fan. Blackpink is sometimes ok, but otherwise I only like men’s choreography). The studio owner gave me instragram links for the teachers (which I had already snooped on my own) and said they usually post before class to announce the lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So two weeks later (because of Thanksgiving) I was so hyped up to go to this class. Finally! I could meet people who like k-pop! And dance to music I love! They never updated their social media with the song, but I wanted to try to class anyway. I was giddy all day and nervous to be going somewhere new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was . . . fine. It was not what I wanted. Yes, we learned choreo to a new song. But it felt like I was at a university club, not a dance class. I was at least 15-20 years older than everyone and, for some reason, about a head taller too. The others talked about assignments and finals, one wearing a Metro State shirt. The teachers were friendly, welcoming me and introducing themselves. But they were not great teachers. It’s hard to be a good dance teacher, and they just didn’t have the skills. Poor demonstrations, not knowing the details clearly, over\/under explaining, etc. (Another odd thing was one of the teachers hitting her vape like it was her water bottle throughout class). <\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked if they do a warm-up and they said they do Random Play Dance for five minutes, and you can just do jumping jacks if you don’t know the choreo. For real? RPD is a dance memory game played by fans<\/a> and idols themselves<\/a>. Yup, that’s what they did. They played youtube for 5 minutes and mostly did jumping jacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They had a laptop on a stool in the front of the class where they literally played a video off youtube. With ads. I considered offering to sign-in to my premium account. Couldn’t they at least rip the files before class? They also had to tether the internet from a student’s phone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With no introduction they switched to the choreo video. It was Hwa Sa’s new solo “I’m a \ube5b<\/a>” (the Korean word is “light,” but it’s pronounced like our b-word). I recognized the video<\/a> they showed as the 1 Million Studio channel and Lia Kim, the choreographer. As I said, I don’t like girl group choreo, but Lia is usually good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The teaching was very imbalanced – they spent 35 minutes on the beginning floor section, then rushed through the second half on our feet in less than 10 minutes. I’m sore on my neck and tailbone from spending so long covering the floor work in excruciating detail. I felt like I could have taught myself from the same video just as easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After we did the whole piece together we split in two groups. I surreptitiously filmed my group to share here. I thought we were done. Nope. The teachers each performed solo, while a friend filmed them. Then others got filmed for their social media too. They spent the last 20 minutes just filming each other. Again, for real?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s my video. One of the two teachers is in shorts on the floor in front of me. (I think I did pretty good, aside from the side swivel because my feet don’t bend that low anymore.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n