stage – The Concordian

K-pop dance workshops help students with self-acceptance

Members of the Concordia K-pop Club gain the confidence to express themselves by dancing to their favourite K-pop choreographies

The crowd is excited, the stage is lit, and K-pop is blasting through the nightclub’s speakers. For first-year Concordia University student Lana Masselon, this memory makes her eyes sparkle with joy as she talks about K-pop events that she has attended around Montreal.

Dancing to K-pop has given her the confidence to overcome her fear, go up on stage, and dance in front of a large audience. This is thanks to the Concordia K-pop Club, which holds several dance workshops throughout the fall and winter semesters. They invite members and non-members to learn choreographies from the community’s favourite K-pop groups and to be true to themselves through dance.

Club member Sooah Kil (Right) Dancing with Amanda Beronilla, K-Pop Club Communications VP (Left) – Chantal Bellefeuille / The Concordian

Masselon attends most of these dance workshops and sometimes even teaches them. She has a modern-jazz dance background but fell in love with K-pop when she learned choreography to the song ‘Kill This Love’ by Blackpink. This inspired her to take a K-pop dance class.

However, since starting university, she has not had the time to keep up with weekly lessons. She said that the workshops sprinkled throughout the school year provide her the opportunity to get exercise and give her a sense of accomplishment.

“If I’m active, I’m happy. I know I need to be active, and K-pop helps keep sports in my life,” Masselon said.

Club member Sooah Kil (Left) Dancing with Amanda Beronilla, K-Pop Club Communications VP (Right) – Chantal Bellefeuille / The Concordian

She said she has found her identity through being accepted by the K-pop community. It has allowed her to break free of society’s status quo.

“Before K-pop, I felt like I didn’t have a style. I just followed what everyone else was doing, and I wasn’t really myself,” she said.

As a taller person, Masselon hid behind clothes she hated, such as jeans, when she wanted to wear clothes like skirts and knee-high socks. One of her favourite K-pop idols, Kim Hongjoong from the group ATEEZ, inspired her to feel more comfortable in her skin.

“I was uncomfortable and scared about what people would think of me,” Masselon said. “Hongjoong says you can wear anything, as long as you feel confident in it, so I don’t try to hide myself anymore.”

She believes that dance brings the K-pop community together, allowing people to meet new friends and bond over common interests.

Other club members feel the beneficial effects that the dance workshops have on their lives too. Concordia K-pop Club President Inas Fawzi strongly feels that the dance workshops have built her confidence more.

“After learning K-pop dances, I started liking my body. It gave me a love for my physical being. Before I was just floating, I wasn’t attached to it. Now I’m like, ‘Wow, I look cool,’” Fawzi said.

Amanda Beronilla, the club’s vice president of communications, also teaches dance workshops. She says that dancing to K-pop is one of the main ways that she can express herself.

“Ever since I was small, I have always loved dancing. I wanted to go into ballet, but I was never able to. With K-pop dance, it feels like I’m able to do something that I’ve always wanted to do,” Beronilla said.

The dance workshops are fun and inclusive. Unlike a K-pop dance crew with high standards, these dance workshops are very welcoming. There’s little pressure, and people are encouraged to come and join in, regardless of their dance skills.

Each two-hour dance workshop is held at Concordia University’s Sir George Williams Campus on the Hall Building’s seventh floor.

You can follow the Concordia K-pop Club on Instagram to learn about upcoming events.

The lightness of paradise and the reality of purgatory embodied by the new Marie Chouinard production

A dance production imitating Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights

Jérôme Bosch’s dance production was created by choreographer Marie Chouinard in honour of the painter’s 500th death anniversary. The performances took place at Usine C, located in the Gay Village, based on the famous oil painting located in El Prado in Madrid.

The space is made of concrete and the stage can be accessed by climbing steps. When one walks in, it appears vast, as sounds resonate and are heightened from one corner to the other. There’s even a bar on the lower level.

The performance was organized in three acts, representing Bosch’s triptych painting. It started with a display of paradise in the centre, followed by the purgatory from the right panel, and ended with the joining of Adam and Eve from the left panel.

Oil on oak panels, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

The final show was entirely full, tickets completely sold out. It was exhilarating to sense the excitement in the room at a representation of a painting admired by so many.

Before the dancers appeared, a screen in the back showed the painting of the earthly delights, closing up on scenes that would be imitated.

As the act of paradise started, dancers entered the stage with animalistic movement, the first two resembling insects. The dancers entered one after the other, moving with inhuman contortions.

As they came on and off the stage, two rounded screens on either side of the stage showed the details in the painting that were being imitated in the dance. These imitations were both remarkable and hilarious, as the dancers contorted their bodies to emulate Bosch’s characters.

Though the dancers were nearly naked, save a small string over their lower stomach, there was nothing that could be sexually perceived, as their movements were so deformed from anything remotely human.

The superfluous movements captured spectators’ attention and at times produced bouts of laughter in the crowd.

The second act made everyone regret the first. As purgatory descended upon us, we were submerged in darkness. Light fell slowly on one dancer, who was standing on two buckets yelling into a mic in her hands as she contorted her body at disturbing angles.

Screeches echoed across the room; maddening noises — sounds that traumatize the mind — building craze within the audience.

Even when the sentiment of true purgatory was sensed in the audience, the dancer did not stop her shrieks. This served to push the comfort levels of the audience, and show a very real instance of hell, as horrid sounds were uttered into the mic, everyone was regretting paradise.

Witnessing her distortions and hearing her cries produced a sentiment of insanity within me, that I could not brush away for hours after the performance.

Subsequently, dancers entered the scene creating a catastrophe within their purgatorial movements. As one dancer was shown repeatedly sliding off stairs never reaching the top, another was running around widely shoving their head into a dumpster. They were all moving randomly, acts of utter strangeness, creating an immense racket.

The final triad was from the Garden of Eden. Two eyes were displayed on either screen, showing Adam waking, and staying in a trance as he gazed at Eve.

The actors’ movements were so slow in this episode that it seemed impossible. Dancers who previously seemed utterly distraught were now united in synchronized movements, representing either Adam or Eve, in duos. They metamorphosed into a paradise form far from reality, cutting off from the previous hell.

When the performance ended, the dancers were showered with claps from the audience. People stood up and applauded for over five minutes, which is quite a while in the realm of appraisal. Emulations of paradise and purgatory were created with such precision that they could be felt by the audience. This impeccable work left spectators stunned at the beauty of it.