When I stumbled across K-POP for the first time at high school it was love at first gloriously sequin-leathered sight. K-POP (Korean pop music/dance) sparked my first love for and interest in dance – I spent hours in my parents’ basement re-watching music video clips in slow motion, committing an anthology of routines to memory, until I could dance (and sing in Korean) in my sleep. To my shame, since graduating from high school, I’ve been largely detached from the glitzy, everchanging K-POP world. Countless boy bands and girl groups have come and gone. So how would an aged veteran of 24 years old fit in at K-POP Party? Armed with a group of high schoolers with current cultural capital at my side, I went along to find out.

Fringe Festival’s K-POP Party is the second event in Auckland Town Hall this week to throw upside down how I see the Town Hall as a venue (the first being MOVEMENT OF THE HUMAN). The line to get into the Town Hall backs onto Aotea Square, and is filled with people of all ages and ethnicities. Being inside at first feels like being at your year 10 school disco; the lights are flashing, the music is booming, but everyone is feeling too shy to really engage even though you can tell they really want to. However, by the end of the night the floor is full, with people making groups and dancing the choruses of their favourite tracks, making circles around breakdancers and feisty K-stars, and even shouting Korean lyrics in unity. At the thunderous bass of each new track, a scream comes up from the crowd. I personally don’t recognise any of the songs or accompanying dances, but my high schooler squad pump out the moves for each one.

Periods of K-POP dance party rave are bookended by performances. K-POP dance cover groups from high schools and tertiary compete for the top prize to the acclaim of the audience. Rina Chae and Street Candee make a guest appearance to deliver the slick and sassy confidence we’ve come to expect from them. 603 Boogie Squad also perform a couple of well-received hip-hop-pop numbers.

What stands out to me most about the event is that it is foremost a community event, with a culturally diverse crowd that has rallied around the international phenomenon of K-POP in Auckland. The crowd is predominantly young people, glammed up and passionately engaging in music and dance in a way I have never seen at the Town Hall. There are groups of young people across Auckland working together to create and perfect dance routines in the steps of their favourite idols, excited about the chance to come together and wow one another with their shared passion together through a language many of them don’t understand. My high schooler gang leave ready to attend the next one. K-POP Party has proven there is an untapped, broad, cross-cultural dance community ready to take advantage of more opportunities to gather and to party.
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