We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chemical X Crew. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chemical X Crew below.

Alright, Chemical X Crew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the best or worst investment you’ve made (either in terms of time or money)? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)

There are plenty of big investments we’ve had to make as a dance group – costumes, camera equipment, studio space and more. But our best investment as a dance group has simply been investing in our members. Last year, we made the decision to create a leadership board with new roles and responsibilities. When given the opportunity, our members stepped up to the plate and were actually energized by the chance to contribute their unique talents in meaningful ways, such as designing costumes and merch, MCing events or planning a team-building pool party. Without creating a system for sharing responsibilities and allowing members to develop certain skills, we would not have been able to grow the way we have and achieve what we have as a group.

We also began hosting inter-team workshops to help us level up our dance skills together. When you go straight from one performance to another to another, sometimes you start to neglect the fundamentals or don’t have time to train in dance styles outside the pieces you’re currently working on. So outside of our regular rehearsal times, we started tapping members to teach workshops with routines meant to challenge us as dancers. This has been a great way to build up our members’ confidence outside their comfort zone in a supportive environment.

Chemical X Crew, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Chemical X is a K-Pop and J-Pop cover dance team founded in Chicago in 2013 that brings you sugar, spice, & everything nice! We are made up of friends that come from diverse backgrounds and have varying levels of dance experience, ranging from professionally trained to self-taught in their bedrooms. What brings us all together is a love for performing, so we focus on having fun, supporting each other, and pushing ourselves as dancers.

In the past few years, we’ve had many exciting opportunities to travel out-of-state to events and competitions and connect with inspiring fellow performers across the country. But we are also driven to grow the local K-pop and J-pop communities in Chicago and the Midwest. We collaborate with other groups and organizations to create opportunities for the community to come together, such as hosting Random Dance Plays and trivia games, and performing at popular destinations like Navy Pier in Chicago and Mall of America in Minneapolis. It’s amazing to see how much the community has grown since our group’s inception. We’re still as excited for the future as when we began 10 years ago!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Our ultimate goal is to have fun while helping each other to become better dancers than we were yesterday and to leave our audience with a smile on their face.

In the past few years, we’ve continued to choose competition sets that have pushed us just beyond our perceived limits. And when you’re trying to continually improve and out-do yourself, it’s easy to succumb to stress, feeling defeated or scared of failure. But that’s when the beauty of a team environment comes into play – when one of us is having a hard day physically or mentally, our other members lift them up and encourage them.

We strive to overcome our roadblocks together ahead of any video shoot, event or competition, so that when it comes time to perform, we can simply focus on having fun. Our desire is for the positive energy we put out onstage to radiate into the crowd. Since we’re a diverse group made up of people who are wholeheartedly pursuing a fairly niche interest, we also hope we can inspire people to pursue their own creative journeys and find kindred people who share their passions.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

As with many other creatives, the pandemic was a huge obstacle for us as a group, and it absolutely forced us to pivot. Pre-prandemic, our group primarily performed at live events and competitions, and we would occasionally film cover videos. But with the world shut down, we no longer had live performance opportunities. We were itching to create together, so when we were able to safely gather to rehearse, we put all our effort into filming dance videos for our YouTube and social media channels.

It was rough at first – we had limited experience in video production and were more or less winging it – but it’s amazing to see how rapidly we evolved as we learned from our mistakes. Different individuals on our team discovered new skills and passions for filming and editing. As we increased our social media presence and the quality and frequency of our video covers, we grew our online audience, attracted talented new members to the group, and ultimately have been given more opportunities to perform once live events returned. So being forced to pivot really helped us unlock our potential as a group.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chemicalxcrew/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chemicalxcrew
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChemicalXCrew