K-pop dance class in Gangnam

by Holly

I spent most of last summer in Korea building industrial solar wafer making machines in an outpost township of Asan. This smallish town is about 90 minutes south of Seoul, and on a number of occasions I had a day off and was able to get up to Seoul by bus to see sights and do some fun activities. Among other things, I took a kimchi making class near Mangwon, carved a name seal with an art teacher, spent the night on the floor of a public bathhouse, went to some korean-english language exchange sessions at a cafe, learned some cake decorating techniques, went dancing at a club in Hongdae, and watched the sun set at Namsan.

But probably the most fun thing I did was to take a k-pop dance class for beginners through Airbnb experiences. We danced to Ddu-du-ddu-du by Blackpink and it was a great way to spend an afternoon. When I came home and my kids watched the video of my group dancing, they said "Dad, we can do better than that!". I said BRING IT. So when we got to Seoul this year for a few days for vacation in June, I signed myself and my two daughters up for a weekday afternoon session of the same class. Son and wife were not interested enough to actually come our for this, so they hung out in our cute neighborhood near Bukchon.

This time we danced to Kill This Love, by Blackpink. The class was smaller and had a higher percentage of foreigners vs. last time I did it, which was on a Sunday. The class format is that you learn the moves for about two hours, then do two takes of a video with a small group of classmates. Here is our group, along with the dance instructor.

Last time, I had a hard time remembering the moves in such a short amount of practice time, so I did some homework before class this time. I was amazed to find that there are tons of high quality dance tutorials for these songs! (example) Even Blackpink has a stripped down version of the music video with just dancing in a studio, which allows you to appreciate just how amazing these performers are at learning and flawlessly executing these dance sequences with flair, rather than being distracted by sequin covered tanks, etc. in the regular music videos. The choreography for the class was simplified vs. what Blackpink does, but a little practice before we went got me familiar with the types of moves in the song and the general way they were strung together.

Anyway, this time the videography was not as clever at disguising our mess-ups and clumsiness when doing our final shot. But we still had a great time together at this activity. Here is our final video.