j-hope’s “Mona Lisa” and a violin cover of “XO” by ENHYPEN were among the dozens of songs played in Jack Adams Hall this evening. The K-pop Adventures club’s third annual event started with performances by local dancers before attendees danced and sang until the sun was visibly setting through the venue’s windows.
Jayi, an artist and former member of the club, performed her debut single, “Blue Angel,” for the first time.
“At first, I wasn’t thinking about it, but then the nerves got to me backstage,” Jayi said. “When I was on there, I forgot about it. It’s very freeing.”
For her, the emergence of K-pop and other Asian pop music made her feel represented.
“I actually discovered P-pop before I discovered K-pop, and that’s like Filipino pop,” Jayi said. “I never saw people like myself, Asian girls, be the star. I usually saw blonde white girls be the pop stars, but then I saw myself with them and thought, ‘Hold on, I can do that.'”
As an alum of San Francisco State University, she was there when the K-pop Adventures club started to host its annual dance night in 2023. She remembered the first “Shall We Dance?” event taking place in a small conference room in an underground level of the Cesar Chavez Student Center.
“I’m glad we upgraded to Jack Adams Hall, with a stage and sound system,” Jayi said.
Planning for the event began in the fall, according to Nicole Szeto, the club’s president.
“We started pretty much putting everything like the DJ and the decorations together in about February when we came back from break and everything was finalized by the end of March,” Szeto said. “Our second president, whose name was also Nicole, came up with this idea that for the end of the year the K-pop club would just come together and have a dance to celebrate and send off our seniors and also showcase some of our performance teams.”
Aaron Suasin danced during the event as part of Lilac, a K-pop team named after the song of the same name by IU. According to Suasin, K-pop melodies feel extremely relatable to many listeners.
“You don’t have to understand the language to enjoy the music,” Suasin said. “There’s a group called BTS, where they had an album called ‘Love Yourself.’ I think it’s affected a lot of fans where they talk about a lot like depression, and other things that are going on in your life that it’s okay to just feel it, but keep moving forward.”
Clarissa Saunders, a student and the club’s vice president, got into K-pop to fit in with her high school friends. She was soon hooked. When she joined the K-pop Adventures club as a freshman, she decided to participate in a dance workshop for ENHYPEN’s “ParadoXXX Invasion.”
“I kept going to workshops and eventually I joined the dance team,” Saunders said. “From there, I just found a real sense of community within the club and the team, and it just — it’s really been a source of comfort and community throughout my college experience.”
Now in her third year, she’s part of G8K, the only K-pop dance team on campus. Tonight, she performed to “Monster” by IRENE & SEULGI of Red Velvet.
Dancers from Moonrise, a team based in San Francisco, also performed at the event.
After the performances, organizers asked attendees to get out of their seats and dance. The songs played included late 2000s tracks like “Rainism” by Rain and “Ring Ding Dong” by SHINee, as well as more recent ones like “Brought the Heat Back” by ENHYPEN and “Whiplash” by aespa.
“It’s nice to see other people at school be involved in things I want to be involved in,” said Kaylyn Body, a fourth-year Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts student. “It was fun to see that there was multiple groups. I actually did not know that there was going to be a lot of performances.”
Szeto hopes more people join the club in the future.
“I do know there are a lot of students at SFSU that like K-pop, because I see their photo cards all the time,” Szeto said. “I just hope that they know there’s a K-pop community on campus.”
