Dance club provides the student body with masterclasses, allowing common students to explore any genre of dance.
Toward the end, every month, NE dance club hosts masterclasses, giving any TCC student the opportunity to experience a genre of dance taught by professional dance students.
Ethan Bui, the president of dance club, explained that the masterclasses consist of different genres every time.
“At the end of the month, every Wednesday, we have these master classes where our company members, Movers Unlimited, they come up with choreography in which they teach that class,” Bui said. “So, yeah, this upcoming [teacher] is Rachel. She’s teaching like a hip hop Jazz Funk one.”
The coaches who teach these lessons for the club are students of associate professor, Hyun Jung Chang. They take classes for their audition- based Dance Company, Movers Unlimited, as well.
Chang said these dancers work very hard to keep up with their performances.
“So, [for] practices, we have rehearsals for our audition-based Dance Company, and those are Mondays and Wednesdays, specifically for the company, 4:30 all the way to 10 p.m.,” she said. “So, our students are here for a long time on school days and then, and they make sure they stay on top of their academics too.”
Starting out as a TCC student herself, Chang said she switched her paths from pursuing Dental Hygiene to Dance after she met professor and coordinator of the dance program, Kihyoung Choi.
“[Choi] mentored me. I got hired whenever I graduated, and I’ve been here since 2018, so I’ve been teaching dance here,” she said. “I guess you could say I made my full circle, because I started here as a dance student, and then I graduated, and am here as a teacher.”
Chang said the audience for dance club has grown a lot.
“When we first started, the dance club was really small,” she said. “With the club growing as well, I think our audience has been growing.”
Alicia Hobson, Chang’s student and a participant of the dance club, talked about the routine for their master classes.
“A master class is kind of like, it’s usually about an hour, hour and a half. And they’ll usually warm you up,” she said. “Every genre is different, depending on the teacher, and basically, by the end, they’ll have a combination for you.”
“They’ll warm up, they’ll do a couple of exercises and stuff, just to get you comfortable with their kind of style. And then you’ll start learning their choreography. And basically, we’ll get to learn the choreography and dance together, and then you can record yourself at the end, if you’d like,” she said. “It’s open to any TCC student.”
