A few days ago, Kate wrote An unexpected love letter to K-Pop. Here is my version:
I grew up dancing – meaning that I started early, about age 5(?), and continued through school, university and adulthood. I’ve been taught ballet, rhythmic gymnastics, jazz dance, ballroom, Lindy Hop, 5Rhythms, blues, bellydance, and tango (plus fencing, yoga, strength/cardio conditioning, tai chi/qi gong, and making music) – ranging from one or two classes to years of training. At uni, I regularly went out dancing once or twice a week, every week. In my 20s and 30s, I spent my free time clubbing and attending gigs, dancing all the while, often in ridiculous outfits and platform boots. I’ve danced to nothing but a drum around a camp fire and in converted factories in front of giant stacks of speakers, barefoot in church, attached to my laptop with headphones, on stages, and in my kitchen.
I don’t think of myself as an athletic person – I don’t especially look like one, for starters, and other things always seemed more important. Although I’m passionate about music and dancing, I’m from a solidly middle-class family that valued academic achievement, career/vocation, art/culture and maybe relationships, in roughly that order, above physical accomplishment. None of us play any team sports, exercise is kinda optional, and dance is only one skill in many for a well-rounded, cultured person: that’s the overall vibe, to situate myself. My dancing bucked those expectations, and I remember being told off for the amount of music I bought. I’m sure my parents would not have been pleased with the time and money I spent moving to music, had I ever admitted it to them; but while I’m quite intelligent and articulate, I’m not actually much of an academic, and so three years of uni would have been even more hellish if I hadn’t had my weekly outlet. I had a tough time in my 20s, because I was quite poor and lacked direction, so dancing until I was exhausted and then ecstatic was my salvation, and meant I didn’t have to get blind drunk or high either.
Between one thing and another, like running a business, getting married and divorced, moving countries, being diagnosed with “hypermobility” and told to stop doing yoga, and falling into a pit of grief, I stopped moving and got frozen in place: quite literally, I spent 6 months last year rarely leaving the room and indeed the bed. I’m still not totally out of the woods, but I’m on the right path at least.
This year, re-engaging with music by getting into Korean pop has given me back my
Hope
Energy
Dreams
Singing
and now Dance
I cried the first time I danced again. Other dancers may understand this: if we ever stop dancing, the day we start again is momentous, a mode of expression available again. Release happens all by itself, energy that got stuck in the body coming out. I know I was avoiding it, at least until I was more stable emotionally. Like, it’s been a year, and I’m only slowly coming to terms with death. I can only feel so much in one go.
It may not seem so obvious why young men from a small country in Asia would be the key to this particular transformation: could I be more different from them?! But if I think about my childhood, it’s not so dissimilar – it’s just that they kept going when I side-lined my dancing. K-Pop seems to have some of the hardest-working entertainers anywhere, which is inspiring when I feel lazy or hopeless. Although many of the lyrics are in Korean, there is more and more English in them (and I don’t mind digging for translations), and the music takes influences from European and American music since the 80s and 90s, so it’s quite accessible to me on that level. Also, K-Pop ignores genre boundaries while Western bands get stuck in them, which suits my taste and love of mash-ups. But really, I think it’s the dancing: not that Western pop singers don’t dance, but there aren’t a lot of groups dancing in formation, which is what I have experience with and relate to. Not to mention the level of accomplishment that K-Pop dancers have! Some of the world’s best choreographers (and producers) are now working for Korean agencies…
I’m establishing a daily dance practice, which was an intention I set myself at the end of last year, and it’s made a lot easier by having easy access to stacks of K-Pop that makes me want to dance, along with amazing dance routines in music videos and live performances, should I be short of inspiration. Has there ever been a better time than this, when artists and performers are endlessly accessible on websites and social media, no matter where on the planet you are?
Here are some things I’ve been dancing and singing to lately:
‘What I Said’ by Victon, plus the album
‘Fame’ by Han Seungwoo with the title track ‘Sacrifice’
‘Criminal’ by Taemin
‘Don’t Call Me’ by SHINee, along with the album
‘Knock’ by Astro
‘Feel Like’ by Woodz, plus a mix / playlist inspired by it
‘Paranoia’ by Kang Daniel, plus ‘Who U Are’
Kate’s mixes – lots of K-Pop and some other genres, plus my YouTube playlists.
My K-Pop Hype playlist on YouTube, older version on Spotify
SkorpionUK 