30 September 2019 – 6 October 2019

• Last dance class for X1’s “Flash”

Like the week before, Jun and I decided to get some practice in before our last dance class this week. We tried to recall the new parts we learnt from last week and while I had some trouble remembering, Jun helped me a lot and in the end, we managed to piece the different parts together. Here is our final practice video:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0m936vjzz5bc130/WhatsApp%20Video%202019-09-29%20at%2021.27.23.mp4?dl=0

For the dance class this week, Jun and I, as well as our instructor wanted to match colours for the last practice and we decided to go with white and red. We were inspired by one of X1’s stage outfits (as shown in the featured image for this blog post). This is the reason why this week’s blog post is titled “Pretty”, because we all made an effort to dress up for this last class.

Since we already got the steps down, this week’s class was just us going through runs after runs of the full choreography. After every single run, we went through certain steps together again to either make the moves look nicer or be more in time with the music.

During this process, I was a little disappointed in myself because I could feel that I was quite tense and my body was not moving as well as I wanted it to. I think I was nervous because I did not want to make any mistakes as this was already the last session. My desire for perfection made me overthink things a lot more and I felt that there were moments when I blanked out as a result instead. I was making mistakes even though I had practiced beforehand and I felt demoralised for a while. 

However, things lightened up after a water break and I told myself to just enjoy the session. Unfortunately, our instructor was sick and could not dance much with us but she joined us for the first part of the song. Despite the fact that both Jun and I were tired after the runs and the difficulties I faced, the energy while we were doing the dance for the last time was good and I am proud to say that this was our ‘prettiest’ run:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a8go6a512yl9v04/2019-10-03%2001.22.13.MOV?dl=0

Thinking back on the dance experience, I think I can pat myself on the back for completing the challenge. I joined an external dance class for the first time and learnt a full dance choreography within a short span of four weeks. From the study sessions before the dance classes and the Ba Kut Teh duppers (dinner + supper) after class, Jun was with me every step of the way. I doubt I would have the courage to try out an open dance class alone and she helped me to memorise the steps so I am very grateful that she agreed to join me on this journey. It had been a great opportunity for two friends to share their love for dancing and K-pop with each other. Our instructor was also really nice and patient with us and we were happy to have gotten dance lessons from her. 

This concludes the dance part of my project. Hopefully, through this K-pop dance segment, I was able to show people that K-pop dance is not as difficult to pick up as they may think and it is actually very fun to do because there are just so many dance styles that can be mashed up into a single song. Personally, I also achieved the goal of celebrating my identity as a K-pop fan by doing a dance from a group whom I have watched progress on a survival show. Furthermore, I realised that there is still a special role for dance schools like this even though people can learn K-pop dances on their own, because they offer a safe space for K-pop fans to learn together and share their love for K-pop dances. Now, I am excited to embark on the next stage of my assignment. There are interesting things I am planning to do that are linked to the Korean language and dramas coming up, so do look forward to them!

23 September 2019 – 29 September 2019

• 3rd dance class for X1’s “Flash”

As promised during last week’s blog update, I would work on my moves so on the Sunday before the dance class for this week, Jun and I arranged our own dance practice session.

We had a really great time and I was happy that I managed to clear up some of my confusion regarding the steps (Jun helped me a lot!). Here are some photos I took during our practice session:

On Wednesday (the day of our dance class), we started the class off by going through a few runs of the whole song to recap all the steps we have learnt. Also, I think our instructor probably wanted to test how much we remembered from all the steps she had taught us for the past two weeks. 

Luckily, we both did our homework! I was really worried about not remembering the steps so imagine how glad I was when my steps flowed naturally while I was doing the runs. In fact, I think I did most of the steps quite nicely so our practice truly paid off! *Clap Clap Clap*. I am sure our instructor could see our effort and we passed the test.

This whole process took up the first half an hour of the lesson and for the next one hour of the class, we spent time coming up with our formations to prepare for our last lesson the following week. Now that we got the moves down, our instructor got us to start by watching X1’s dance practice video to pick a favourite member (and presumably to follow his steps for our final dance practice) as well as to see how each of them executes the steps so that we can improve our performance of them.

This is the dance practice video we watched:

After watching the video, Jun suggested that instead of doing complex formations that involve us moving around a lot, we could just do mirror versions of the dance, meaning one person will dance the moves for the left side and the other person will do the ones for the right. Since we only have three people doing the dance, we could not do the intricate position changes anyway so we all thought it was a good idea.

So the rest of the time was spent learning the opening part of the song, which was forty seconds long. I had some trouble doing this part and kept making mistakes because even though the moves were not complicated, it was difficult to coordinate the timing and making sure that I was moving my hands and feet on the correct side (I was doing the moves for the left side). 

Furthermore, Jun and I had to learn a partner dance that will come in during the later part of the dance. It felt a little awkward and weird but we had fun with that too. This was the most memorable part of this week’s dance class for me so I decided to name this week’s update with something related. Since the title of the update had to be something related to NU’EST as well, I thought of naming it “Daybreak” because the song is a duet by two of the NU’EST members, JR and Minhyun. It is an interesting song because these two members cannot have voice qualities that are more distinct from each other. JR has a deep baritone voice when he raps while Minhyun sings in such a smooth and soft voice that it sounds like honey in your ears. Despite their different voice qualities, their voices mesh so well together that sometimes you cannot tell when one ends and the other begins. I felt that the song perfectly captures the essence of a partner dance because while both Jun and I may not work well together at first, each of us brings a part of the dance with us in our own distinctive styles to make up a better whole when we move together in time with the music.

After struggling for some time, we finally got the hang of it and while it was not perfect, we were all quite proud of our final run that day:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hva9qeye70vp41k/WhatsApp%20Video%202019-09-26%20at%2003.05.13.mp4?dl=0

Nearing the end of the class, our instructor asked us to think about what colours to wear for next week’s class. Apparently, she will try to colour coordinate for all her classes when it is the last lesson. She said we could look at X1’s stage outfits for inspiration and we were both excited to go do our research before the next class. Having said that, I was also a little sad that it is going to be our last class soon because I really enjoyed going back to dancing after a while. Seeing that our piece is finally stitching together as we learnt the transitions that had previously been missing is a bittersweet feeling. I guess I will just have to treasure the short amount of time I have left with this dancing project of mine and I sincerely hope that we will be able to give an awesome performance next week. 

16 September 2019 – 22 September 2019

• Second dance class for X1’s “Flash”

For this week, I attended the second lesson of X1’s “Flash” dance class at Studio De S. More of the choreography was taught and things are getting a lot more challenging but as mentioned in the previous project update, I am prepared to work hard to master the choreography. To reflect this determination and remind myself to remain motivated till the end, this week’s blog post is titled, “Overcome”, after the name of the title track for NU’EST’s fourth mini album. 

As usual, my friend, Jun, accompanied me to the dance class and it was just the two of us in the class that day as the third student could not make it. We started with the usual warm-ups and recapped last week’s choreography at eighty percent of the normal speed. I was quite glad that I had been a good student and made an effort to practise last week’s steps on my own prior to the class. As a result, both Jun and I were able to follow the steps of our dance instructor, Kei. I was really proud of us when she nodded her approval and moved on to teaching us the other parts of the choreography.

However, this was when things started getting a bit harder because there are now more steps to remember. At this point, I would like to mention that actually the moves for X1’s “Flash” are relatively easy to follow compared to the dances I have done in the past but the challenge lies in doing the moves powerfully and precisely when the song is at full speed. 

After learning the new steps, we tried practicing the moves together with the music while linking the steps from the previous week. Although I made some mistakes, I could follow most of the steps and I was glad that I was able to do that even though the steps were newly taught to me. Memorising steps have always been the toughest part about dancing for me so I was particularly happy when I did not embarrass myself too much by messing up the moves. 

Since we had mostly been practicing the song at eighty percent of the original speed, Kei then got us to try dancing at a hundred percent of the full speed. When we first heard the original speed of the song, both Jun and I were shocked because it felt like the normal speed of the song was just like the two times faster speed of other K-pop dances. This was when I acutely felt how talented the members of X1 are for being able to pull off such a fast song.

Nonetheless, we tried dancing at full speed for a few times. In fact, we both worked so hard that we were even practicing during our water breaks. This is a link to the video with our final run that day:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ocn4wbch8kc6f7c/WhatsApp%20Video%202019-09-20%20at%2008.29.50.mp4?dl=0

Unfortunately, I felt that the video does not do justice to our hard work. I think we were both tired from having to kneel down and stand up for the floor work in the dance such that our final run did not look as clean as I would have liked.

Yet, practice makes perfect so I am glad that through this lesson, I realised that I need to work more on my stamina and brush up on my steps. I will work on this before the next lesson and as usual I will post my progress on this blog. Despite the difficulties, I will stay true to my original intention of rising up to the challenge and eventually ‘overcome’.

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

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