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Seoul Dance School Provides Safe Space for Korea's LGBTQI

Jason Strother

   SEOUL - Faced with discrimination and lacking support from their
   country's leaders, some in South Korea's LGBTQI community have found
   acceptance and protection in a place where they can express themselves
   without fear of judgement - and learn to dance like their favorite
   K-pop idols, too.

   In an unmarked basement located beneath an indoor, virtual reality golf
   course, a class of 11 students rehearse choreography set to the song
   Mansae by the boyband Seventeen. As the music starts to blast from
   surround-sound speakers, the dancers snap into formation and then
   twist, shuffle and spin across the floor in front of wall-to-wall
   mirrors.

   Kim Yu-jin, who opened the Luddan dance school four-years ago, bounces
   from student to student, correcting their moves while keeping up with
   the beat.

   Kim and almost all of the studio's 80 regular members identify as a
   gender or sexual minority; the 28-year old describes herself as queer
   and intersexual.

   Kim says Luddan is where queer identity and feminism find common cause
   - both shun conventional ideals of how women should look and move their
   bodies.

   "Instructors at other dance schools insult women about their body
   shape. They tell students to move their hips in a more feminine way,"
   she says. "Dancing shouldn't be about gender and it's not the place for
   a teacher to say what is or isn't feminine."

   Kim says for South Korea's LGBTQI community, Luddan is a "safe place"
   in a country that's largely unsympathetic and is at times outright
   hostile to people like her.

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