Krescendo, a K-pop dance club at Sacramento State, placed first in the Summer ANX K-pop battle at SacAnime on Sept. 1, where they competed against 14 other groups.

President and founder Kristina Yang created Krescendo in fall 2017 when she said she realized that there was no Korean pop music dance club on campus. Though she started the group when she was only a second year student at Sac State, she has managed to get roughly 50 new sign up’s during club rush this semester and has led Krescendo to winning their first award.

Korean pop music — typically known as K-pop — generally falls under the pop category, but also frequently remixes latin and R&B style songs. Popular K-pop songs include “Gangnam Style” and “I Am The Best (내가 제일 잘 나가)” and groups like 2NE1 and BTS — known as the Bangtan Boys — are listened to by millions of people across the globe.

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“I listened to a lot of K-pop in high school, so I wanted to apply my knowledge and create a space for people that shared the same interest,” Yang said.

To prepare for their performance at SacAnime, they practiced twice a week for four hours each day, Yang said. During the month of August, Yosemite Hall, which holds their practice studio, was closed for cleaning so she said that they practiced outside of the building in 100-degree weather.

The competition only allowed up to eight members per team, but since most of Krescendo’s members were either away for the summer or weren’t available, they had to compete with seven.

SacAnime’s dance battle were judged based on how well contestants executed a K-pop dance cover for two to three minutes. Krescendo chose to cover the songs “KKPP” by MiSO and “Hey You” by 24K, Yang said

The theme of the performance was flirtatious and cunning, Yang said.

“It’s a very generic concept but with that, it leaves a lot of room for creativity in terms of how you portray your flirtatiousness, essentially, and that played into our facials,” Krescendo’s secretary Anthony Bernardez said.

The club’s goal was to showcase their skills, but they never thought they would win, Bernardez said.

“We were all shocked that we won,” Bernardez said. ”I guess because when they announced the third place and second place winners, we knew they were really good and didn’t think we compared.”

Mark Joseph Abuda, a team captain, said the team became doubtful as they watched the other contestants perform.

“Through time and hard effort, we remembered our goal to win the competition and eventually we did,” Abuda said.

Now that the competition is out of the way, the group will focus on bonding with new members and creating new choreography, Bernardez said.

“We are just trying to structure ourselves more and establish a foundation for the group,” Bernardez said.