Vibe_, Georgetown University’s K-pop dance crew, struck “Dynamite” by tapping into the worldwide phenomenon of Korean pop music and dance to construct a welcoming and energetic community on campus. 

Students founded Vibe_ in 2018 after experiencing a lack of representation and space for those interested in modern Korean and East Asian dance in the Georgetown community. Despite being a young club, Vibe_ has made great leaps in order to differentiate itself from the Korean Student Association (KSA) as a pop culture and dance-oriented club and provide a space for anyone who shares a passion for K-pop. 

Anna Cheng (MSB ’25) — a member of Vibe_ — said the group is important to her because of the welcoming atmosphere of the club.  

“Vibe_ in general is very inclusive. The K-pop community is a very inclusive community. It doesn’t matter if you don’t speak Korean or if you’re not Korean or if you don’t know anything about Korean culture,” Cheng said in an interview with The Hoya. “I feel like you can still enjoy K-pop in general because it’s just a form of entertainment, and I think that if you appreciate music or dance I think you would enjoy K-pop.”

From 2018 to now, Vibe_ has experienced the connective power of the internet during the COVID-19 pandemic and transformed into a more resilient, passionate dance community on campus that uses social media to grow their community. 

Vibe_ and K-pop on Campus

Following the emergence of K-pop in Western media in 2018, Vibe_ has provided a space where K-pop fans can build community and share their love for dance. 

Megan Joson (MSB ’22), president of Vibe_, has been a part of the dance group since its beginnings; she started leaning into the choreographic side of K-pop in high school and joined Vibe_ to continue her passion in college. 

“I had been listening to K-pop kind of all throughout high school, but towards the last few years of high school, I started getting into actually learning choreography myself, and I had a really great time doing that with my friends,” Joson said in an interview with The Hoya. “I was trying to find something similar on Georgetown’s campus. I was really lucky that I was able to find Vibe_.”

Since 2018, Vibe_ has posted over 40 dance covers on their YouTube channel, Instagram page and TikTok account. The dance crew now has almost 90 members, all of whom help foster a vibrant K-pop dance community, according to Joson. 

“Not only did they provide a space for people who are passionate and interested in dancing, it is also just such a welcoming and fun community to be a part of,” Joson said. “Those two factors really made Vibe_ something that I wanted to join and also stay involved with throughout my entire time at Georgetown.”

The rise of the club’s social media presence followed a boom in K-pop consumption worldwide. In 2016, groups like BTS and BLACKPINK burst onto the international stage, amassing hundreds of millions of YouTube views and monumental album sales. Four years later, K-pop’s popularity grew exponentially on streaming platforms and social media sites. Mainstream news sources such as The Washington Post and Vox attribute K-pop’s large online presence to the addictive rhythms and genre-mixing featured in many mega-hits like BTS’s “ON,” aespa’s “Next Level” or TWICE’s “FANCY.” 

Cheng described her relationship with K-pop as a universal one. 

“Dance is a global language,” Cheng said.

K-pop, though significantly culturally impacted, is simply another form of entertainment that a wide variety of onlookers can enjoy. Cheng said that the K-pop community is special in that it draws inspiration from many genres of music, such as hip-hop and rap, to create something universally appealing that any audience member can relate to.

Vibe_, at its core, is a club designed purely for members to bond over their love of K-pop, regardless of dance skill level or knowledge of Korean culture, according to Becks Truong (COL ’24), who served as the Marketing and Media Director of Vibe_ last semester. 

“We are not an affinity club, and we are not a replacement for KSA,” Truong told The Hoya. “We are just people who like K-pop. No matter the level of expertise or skill a potential member has, Vibe_ is a welcoming place to both learn about K-Urban dance and be social with those who share your interests.”

The Key to Online Engagement

From performing live at UNICEF’s 2019 Student Summit to suddenly being only able to connect virtually, Vibe_ found its footing online by following in the footsteps of big K-pop groups. The prevalence of K-pop performances, dance challenges and covers of choreography on social media helped Vibe_ figure out the next steps to take in an uncertain time. 

“The fact that there’s a precedent of people learning dances on their own and posting dance covers on the Internet, regardless of where they might be located, definitely gave us a lot of ideas on what we could do as a club moving forward,” Joson said. 

K-pop’s significant online presence allowed Vibe_ to seamlessly maintain an interactive community in a period of discord and disconnect. 

“I think, obviously, for people who know K-pop, know that social media has been very integral in the kind of proliferation and spread of [the genre] around the world. … It’s been the number one way that we’ve capitalized on the big following of K-pop on social media,” Joson said.

However, transitioning to an online environment in March 2020 posed an obstacle to fulfilling the club’s core mission: how could you be a dance group when you couldn’t dance together? 

“It’s hard to do things online because of the nature of the dance club. The whole point is to get together and do dances and covers together,” Joy Chung (COL ’24), a member of Vibe_, told The Hoya. 

Although challenging, pushing choreography online was one way Vibe_ started to become part of the online K-pop phenomena. Creating new online opportunities, the group found a way to still have general body members engage with dance in a virtual environment by drawing inspiration from tech-savvy K-pop idols, according to Truong. Monthly Virtual Dance Challenges (VDCs) kept members engaged and active even without being able to meet face to face during the virtual academic year, according to Truong. 

“We would announce the name of a song, the time stamp, typically the chorus part of the dance, and then give the general body members a week or so to submit the videos,” Truong said. “Me and the other senior advisor would edit them within a week or so and then release [the VDCs] for everyone to see.”

Since the beginning of the club, Instagram has been Vibe_’s hub for sharing performance videos. Though YouTube and the South Korean streaming platform “VLive” are the main tools used by the largest K-pop groups, using Instagram allows Vibe_ to take a more personalized approach, according to Truong. 

Social media can connect both die-hard K-pop fans and newcomers to the genre. Not only do current K-pop fans interact with artists and other fans on these platforms, new fans are also able to discover artists easier than ever before through social media. 

This strategic use of online platforms is key to K-pop’s success, according to Chung. 

“I would actually argue that social media is the main way that K-pop has kind of reached a broader audience. I think through social media, it has been able to reach a much larger audience and kind of with little hip-hop dance trends or things like that. Obviously social media is the easiest way to reach many people,” Chung said.

Beyond the Dance Studio

Because Vibe_ prides itself on being a welcoming community to students of any skill level, the organization has created a space where members can freely come together and bond over their shared interest. 

“It’s not just a space for people to come and dance and then that’s it,” Joson said. “We’ve built a community of people who are interested in K-pop. The community that has been forged was not exclusive through dancing, but with dancing as a main pillar grounding the community.”

Cheng came to Georgetown with an existing passion for K-pop, thanks to her friends from high school. Excited to find a community of fellow K-pop lovers, Cheng joined Vibe_ in the fall of 2021. 

“I joined it mainly because I really wanted the dance community, or just a community where people have the same interests as me,” Cheng said. “It’s really interesting interacting with everybody in the club because you get to see like ‘Oh, we have this band in common, but I also listen to this one, and I think you should check it out’ or maybe we have the same favorite band but a different favorite member, and that speaks a lot to someone’s personality.”

Ultimately, overcoming the challenges of the transition to an online environment strengthened Vibe_’s ability to harness the benefits of social media even after the university returned to in-person operations in August 2021, according to Joson. 

“Looking back, we actually did quite a good job of adapting,” Joson said. “We were still able to bring people together, even if it wasn’t synchronously and put something out that [members] can look back on and be proud of.”