Five days before Christmas, my sister and I went out dancing. Photo City, a local Rochester dance hall, advertised a Taylor Swift-themed dance party for Friday and a K-pop night Saturday. So, on that wintry December evening, despite heavy flurries falling outside her apartment window that obscured the streets, we got ready in her bathroom. To pop music, we applied makeup, she let me borrow her gold glitter freckles and we pulled on our dancing shoes for the first time in years.

To be clear, I am not a good dancer. With great, mainstream K-pop comes great responsibility. I may not be a good dancer, but I am a very enthusiastic lyric-shouting jumper, which is why we went to Taylor Swift night first.

Photo City, with its sickly sweet cocktails in Day-Glo colors and its neon “Let’s get weird” bar sign, reminded me of the unpretentious clubs of my Edinburgh youth. Think sticky floors, ultraviolet laser lights and fog machines. The venue smelled of spilled drinks and bleach. Its name was a nod to the Kodak Company, one of the world’s largest film and camera manufacturers before camera phones ruled the world, founded by Rochester’s entrepreneur-inventor George Eastman whose name is synonymous with the city’s former glory days.

The crowd was eclectic: A girl in head-to-toe........

© The Korea Times