Week 4: Action

9 September 2019 – 15 September 2019

• First dance class for X1’s “Flash”

Since last week’s project update was delayed, I am doing a double posting this week. This week’s blog post is titled “Action”, which is the name of NU’EST’s first mini-album and I thought this title was suitable because of multiple reasons. 

First, from this week onwards, I will be embarking on the K-pop dance segment of my project which I am really excited about as it has been some time since I last danced. As this will be a relatively  ‘active’ activity, I find there cannot be a better name for this update. Second, the word “Action” also brings to mind the ubiquitous cue that film directors always use to signal to actors to begin their acting performances once the cameras start rolling and I wanted to incorporate the performative aspect of K-pop dances into my title somehow too. Finally, a NU’EST song name is also an apt title for a blog update about a dance class on X1’s latest song because the latter had just come off Produce X 101, which was the very same survival show NU’EST had been on, two seasons earlier. 

It was in consideration of such a special connection between these two groups that I have decided to sign up for X1’s regular class at Studio De S, a K-pop based performing arts school with classes taught by professional dance instructors from both Korea and Singapore. In fact, in that same week, the studio actually offers many other classes by other K-pop groups and the songs are usually the latest ones that were just released. Other than regular classes, the studio also offers open classes and it frequently updates its Facebook page with information about them.

From the videos I saw on the school’s Facebook page and from talking to the instructors, their students are mostly young people. They can be as young as 8 or 9 years old, because the school offers kids classes as well, to students around our age. They have guys signing up to take their classes too.

For me it is interesting to note how the K-pop dance following in Singapore is actually quite huge because you have a school that can literally sustain their model from teaching K-pop dance alone. I think this has to do with the active community of K-pop fans and fans of K-pop dances that allow for such a fast-paced turnover in terms of the dances that are taught.

Besides that, I believe the fact that I had also watched X1’s season of Produce helped to stir my interest in their debut song. Since I am on the topic of Produce, I should also mentioned that this studio seems to be quite prestigious as I saw on its Facebook page that it occasionally invites star instructors to the studio to conduct classes as well. One of them being a famous dance instructor on Produce, Choi Young Jun. 

My friend, Jun (she got a brief mention in my previous update), who you may know is a huge K-pop fan after reading my previous blog post, recommended me to try out this studio and we decided to sign up for a class together. 

That brings me to another reason why we chose to do a boy group dance instead of a girl group one. It was actually because both of us are not a fan of doing cutesy moves (no offense to any girl groups in the K-pop industry doing cutesy moves) and we wanted to challenge ourselves to do a boy group dance as there is a saying that boy group dances are more difficult (not sure how true this is though). 

Anyways, both of us did our homework before going for class by watching X1’s “Flash” MV and their dance practice video to get a better idea of what we were signing ourselves up for. It turns out that we both really liked the dance and were excited to go for our first lesson. Especially for me, I spotted a few street jazz moves in the dance and since I am a fan of the genre, I immediately knew I had made the right choice.

For the first lesson, Jun and I decided to set off early for the studio in case we get lost but the studio was actually quite easy to find. It is about a 10-15 minutes walk away from Chinatown MRT station and you will need to take a lift to the second floor. 

Once we reached the second floor, we had to ask around for the right studio because the classes were not indicated on the doors. Eventually, we found the right room and this was how it looked like on the inside:

Generally, we found the place to be very homey and well-maintained. The studio gave us a comfortable vibe and I was beginning to feel even more excited about taking classes at the studio.

For that day’s class, there were only three students in total including us. Apparently, that was a number that was smaller than the average four to five students the studio typically expects for regular classes. We were talking to our dance instructor and she told us that it is quite normal because people sometimes only like a certain part for some songs and they would choose to go for open classes where they can learn just that specific part instead. While we were initially surprised at the small class size, we did not really mind it because it felt like we were having our own private class. It was also interesting to see a male student in the dance class who likes k-pop as well. 

After some warm-ups, the dance instructor proceeded to teach us the steps for the chorus and she added some more parts after seeing that we were able to catch the steps quite quickly. Overall, the one and a half hour experience was really fun because our dance instructor was so nice and friendly and especially patient with us. For me, the feeling of going back to dancing again was refreshing and the familiar sense of accomplishment I felt at being able to at least complete a small part of the dance was truly palpable. 

Here is a link to our dance practice video after our very first session (I am the one in pink):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s17szxnqzftwjfl/WhatsApp%20Video%202019-09-11%20at%2023.26.43.mp4?dl=0

As you can see, I still do not have all the moves down precisely yet but I think this is exactly what I would like to show through my project updates. Not a perfect clean version of a K-pop dance cover but my gradual improvement and progress over the next few weeks. Although it is uncommon to showcase imperfect dance covers on public platforms such as blogs, I would like to focus more on the process and less on the end product. My objective is to simply celebrate little milestones, no matter how small they may be and also just the fact that I was able to do the same dance as these talented idols while perhaps getting a glimpse into the kind of hard work they had to put in for the amazing dance performances we always see on stage. Wish me luck and please kindly bear with the clumsiness you may witness from me over the next few weeks. I will try my best to post on time so do keep a lookout on this blog for updates!

Studio De S

Address: 23 Kampong Bahru Road #02-04

Singapore

Website: https://www.studiodessg.com

FB Page: http://www.facebook.com/studiodes

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/studiodessg

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/studiodessg