Urban Athlete

Gym or Dance Floor? Either Works

Victoria Kang, a teacher and choreographer from South Korea, leading a K-pop dance class. "In K-pop, you need to express the emotion of the lyrics," she said.CreditCreditMelanie Fidler for The New York Times

By Daniel Krieger

EVER since I got a C+ in a modern-dance class in college — despite my sincerest effort — I have been keenly aware that I am no dancer. Attempts over the years to learn other forms, including hip-hop and salsa, confirmed this. Yet I stubbornly persist. So when I learned about a K-pop dance class, I decided to give it a whirl.

On a recent evening, I went to the Empire Fitness Advantage Studios on West 32nd Street to attend Bounce Dance Studio’s inaugural Manhattan class. The teacher, Victoria Kang, led nine students through some stretching and conditioning before we set out to learn the choreography of “Number 9,” by the South Korean girl group T-ara.

Ms. Kang walked us through the intro, counting slowly as she broke down each move, raising and then lowering one arm, rolling the head and then spinning around just before the drums came in. We did it with the music several times, and then went on to the next section, followed by a recap from the top.

Most of the class forged ahead, but I barely kept up, breaking a sweat as I tried to get my muscles to remember the steps and the hand, arm, hip and head movements. And that wasn’t all. Ms. Kang also had us consider the interior of the piece.

“In K-pop, you need to express the emotion of the lyrics,” she said, explaining that a K-pop song is like a scene in a TV drama. The character in “Number 9,” who is beseeching her lover not to abandon her, highlights the melodrama by pounding her fist against her heart and strutting out an array of girlie, coquettish, seductive gestures, like delicately pushing her hair behind one ear and gliding her hands over her head and torso.

A performer, teacher and choreographer from South Korea, Ms. Kang, 35, moved to New York City last year and opened the Bounce studio in Flushing, Queens, over the summer. Her timing couldn’t have been better. With the stratospheric success of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” K-pop, which had already been making headway beyond South Korea, received considerable attention. Still, few places in the city offer such a class.

“I want more people to love K-pop,” said Ms. Kang, who set up the Midtown Manhattan space to reach a broader audience.

The star of the class, Dorian Shorts, a 29-year-old actor and dancer living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said he had recently added K-pop to his repertoire after joining a dance group devoted to it. This was his first chance to learn one of its routines in a class.

“It’s always easier to be in a studio,” he said, “with a mirror and somebody correcting you and telling you what to do.”

Ms. Kang beautifully modeled the sequence, which covered the first half of the song, and circulated to help out. We ran through it one last time, and then everyone clapped and cheered. I still had lots of room for improvement but was satisfied enough with my slightly avant-garde rendition, which might have earned me a gentleman’s B.

Another K-pop newbie whose debut was impressive was Jihyen Crowley, a 35-year-old Korean-American florist who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She said the easygoing atmosphere and moderate pace were just right for her, and because the class offered a decent cardio workout, she planned to return.

“K-pop is really in, so it’s cool to learn some of the moves and how to flow through it,” she said, adding that the next time she’s on a dance floor, “I’m breaking it out.”

Bounce K-pop classes are at Empire Fitness Advantage Studios, 38 West 32nd Street, Manhattan;

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C35 of the New York edition with the headline: Gym or Dance Floor? Either Works. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe