South Korean choreographer, dancer and leader of HOOK crew Aiki (Kang Hyein) joined fellow member Odd (Cho Minkyung) to teach USC students as a part of KCCLA’s 2023 K-pop Academy.
This collaboration ran for a week starting on October 23rd and is a collaboration between the Korean Culture Center of Los Angeles and the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. During the week, Aiki and Odd taught classes to Kaufman students, Aiki spoke about her experience at a speaker event, and the pair led a dance workshop open to the general USC community.
Aiki began as a competitive Latin ballroom dancer and first entered the global dance scene at World Of Dance in 2019 as part of the duo All Ready with Yang Salang. Here, they combined Latin dance with hip hop. Her first experience in the K-pop world was when she created the choreography for the supergroup REFUND SISTERS in 2020.
However, she gained most of her fame when she appeared on Street Woman Fighter in 2021, a South Korean show that showcased eight female dance crews, where she competed with HOOK.
Since then, Aiki’s most notable choreography is her work with Bibi on her song “Vengeance.” This piece became an internet sensation with K-pop idols, dancers, and even fans around the world doing the dance challenge.
When planning the weeklong events at USC, Professor Hye Jin Lee from USC Annenberg was one of the primary organizers with experience, having previously worked on last year’s KCCLA x USC K-pop Festa.
“KCCLA’s K-pop Academy, which they do every year, they introduce K-pop dance and K-pop singing to K-pop fans,” said Lee. “But they have never introduced K-pop dance to dance professionals.”
She had been looking at the curriculums at other USC schools and noticed how Kaufman focused on exposing their students to a wide variety of dance genres.
When deciding who to bring to Kaufman, Professor Lee stated that she “wanted KCCLA to know that if we are introducing K-pop dance to Kaufman students, I want the best instructors… We need to bring the best because we are teaching the best dance students in the world – and somehow we got lucky and [KCCLA] got connected to Aiki’s management company.”
The weeklong visit from Aiki included classes for Kaufman students as well as speaker events and an open workshop for all students.
During the Kaufman exclusive events, Aiki and Odd taught dances to students including the “Vengeance” choreography during the Monday class. Lee described her experience watching the workshop saying, “A lot of them, I think, are aware of K-pop but I doubt a lot of them realize that there’s a place for them to be engaged [in K-pop]... To see them really getting into it was really a joyful experience to watch and witness.”
Meanwhile, the “Conversation with Aiki” speaker event gave insight into her journey as an artist. When preparing for this event, Professor Lee described how there were many pieces to keep in mind. The audience members were a mixture of dancers and non-dancers, Koreans and non-Koreans, longtime Aiki fans and casual enthusiasts.
One of the choices Professor Lee made was to showcase clips of Aiki’s work from World of Dance and Street Woman Fighter. “It’s one thing to just talk about what Aiki did, maybe the best way to do it is to show what she has done,” Professor Lee said.
Through a translator, Aiki explained that as a choreographer, it is important that she stays true to her and HOOK’s character by “showing the color of HOOK” through every piece.
Her dances feature comedy and display not only her vision but also the ideas of members in her crew. They showcase her style as a leader as well when choosing to use a HOOK member’s choreography over her own for the finale of Street Woman Fighter.
This piece was about motherhood rather than the hard-hitting choreography viewers and judges anticipated for the finale.
She reveals, “Up to that point in the competition, it was my choice in the dance direction… If I was not a mother myself, I would not have done this piece but I understood the message of it… I knew we weren’t going to win but wanted to have this performance.”
She is one of the few well-known professional South Korean dancers that is married and a mother. But even with balancing a personal life, Aiki was able to grow greatly in the dance community, especially after Street Woman Fighter that drew people of all skill levels to her workshops in Korea. Now, she sees herself as a teacher and also has interests in expanding into the world of musical performances.
The final event of the week was the “Open Workshop with Aiki and Odd” hosted at the Kaufman Courtyard. The event drew a wide variety of people ranging from Kaufman students to non-majors involved in dance organizations at USC like Chaotic 3, NSQK, and Spade A Dance, to even those with no experience whatsoever.
At the workshop, Aiki and Odd taught the popular K-pop dances to JEON SOMI’s “Fast Forward,” New Jean’s “Super Shy,” and PSY’s “That That.” For Super Shy, Aiki and Odd also taught their own version of the choreography dubbed “Not Shy.” This version was essentially a more masculine, hip hop version of the original dance and all the participants laughed when Aiki explained that she wanted to teach the “Not Shy” version.
Following those three dances, they did a “Random Play Dance,” where a few random K-pop songs were played. Everyone stood in a semi circle, and people who knew the dance to the songs that came on were invited to come out and dance with Aiki and Odd. One of the songs they played was “Smoke,” popularized by the new season of Street Woman Fighter and choreographed by Bada from the crew Bebe.
As the pair taught the choreography, Aiki also interacted with the audience. She walked through the crowd and asked people questions such as “Who’s your favorite K-pop girl group?”
One of the people who answered her questions was Blake Levins, a Kaufman minor and who is also in the USC dance team Chaotic 3. He shocked Aiki with his Korean proficiency.
He had previously seen Aiki during a trip to South Korea and explained, “I first like saw [Aiki] and her crew HOOK on [Street Woman Fighter], and I was just very intrigued by the amount of like personality, energy, and creativity that they put into their art and how much it seeks to connect with the audience. I really admire that about her.”
“I think as a dancer myself, I really appreciate having opportunities where choreographers are brought from overseas or from just different kinds of areas or different focuses than what USC specializes in because it gives so much opportunity to grow and gain new perspectives. And I’m sure people in Kaufman can elaborate on this more, but what I’ve heard from them is like she was such a fun person to learn from,” said Blake. “[The Aiki events are] something that I really appreciate USC for doing as a dancer.”
