Senior Ray Rodriguez-David is a member of the K-pop club. He joined in February of last year, and now dances with his friends on stage during assemblies and shares his love for K-pop with others. He agreed to go more in-depth about what he does in K-pop club.

This story has been edited and condensed.

Why did you join the club?

I like K-pop club a lot. It’s sometimes about the music but mainly the dancing. I enjoy dancing and I’m really into hip hop style dancing so most of the choreographies we do are hip hop.

Who runs the club?

Dahmya Moore. It was originally a club for music all around the world including K-pop, but everyone started calling us K-pop club since we performed a K-pop song. So the name just stuck.

What’s the best part of K-pop club?

The best part is being able to dress up based on the song’s theme, then pretend you’re sort of in a concert when performing on stage. I also like sharing my music taste with the other members

What days do you guys meet? What time do you meet?

Right after school around 2:40 on Mondays and Thursdays. Mondays we’re in the auditorium and then on Thursdays we are in the dance room.

Do you think Pace admin gives enough support to your club?

Kind of. I feel like at the start of the club we had to do the runaround to get space to actually dance and practice, but as of now, we’ve gotten all the support we need. We got that space we needed. We use the auditorium and the dance room but we had to really push for that and I feel like our advisors did really good in helping us be heard by Pace admin.

How are you able to balance K-pop club and school work?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by school work, so after school [I go to] K-pop club [because] it calms me down. It makes me kind of enjoy coming to school since I have something to look forward to.

What’s the hardest part of doing choreo?

Maybe the formation is because the songs that we do, it’s not even for the amount of members that we have in the club. In the club right now we have six members who actually dance, and the choreographies that we do, they either have five members or ten members and that’s really hard to change up.

How does it feel like going up on stage and performing in front of all your peers?

Sometimes it’s scary. When I was younger, I struggled with social anxiety disorder. So it took me a long time to really be comfortable to put myself out there and dance in front of all these people. But to be honest it helps me relieve a lot of stress and socialize more with others. It’s really fun performing, but it could be nervous before you’re about to go on stage.