We were lucky to catch up with Kasi Lee recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kasi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I’ve always been the type to lead others, but didn’t really have the confidence to do so because I didn’t believe I was qualified enough to be considered a “leader”. Even in school, I was always the one to manage what needed to be done, helped delegate tasks and kept everyone on track so eventually I asked myself, “what’s stopping me from leading something I’m passionate about with other like minded individuals?”

FINESSE initially started in 2020 right when the pandemic hit with the intentions of it just being a group of friends who like to dance together. We didn’t have a designated leader because no one wanted the responsibility for it and there wasn’t really a direction for FINESSE at the time. Come 2021, I decided to take that role and make FINESSE into something more. I wanted to share my passions with other people and I really enjoy being surrounded by creative energy. If I could go back in time, I’d tell myself to just do it and don’t mind those who are too scared to take up the task.

The ability to learn and adapt are probably the most essential skills to have in this kind of changing industry. There’s so much to learn about dance especially now that we’ve infused both K-pop and Open style into our team. It’s opened many opportunities for us and we really haven’t stopped our growth since our rebranding. However, that doesn’t mean it’s been easy the whole way through. There have been many moments, especially in our first year back as FINESSE, where we were greatly humbled, and to an extent, bashed on for not learning enough about certain styles of dance. In those moments, it was really hard to understand why you wouldn’t want to encourage or educate others instead of looking down upon them. But you can only really control how you react to something, so we took that energy and really doubled down on where our fundamentals were at.

Kasi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

FINESSE is a competitive K-pop & choreography-based dance team that rebranded in 2021. Even though we’re still pretty new, our members consist of dancers who have 6-10+ years of performing/dance experience in variety of dance styles like traditional Cambodian dance, K-pop, and hip hop. We have a competitive K-pop team that competes out of state and occasionally nation-wide, and our choreography-based team creates projects for our team holistically to help improve our fundamentals as dancers and as a team. We eventually want our choreography team to start competing in dance competitions, but are mainly training as of now. FINESSE holds online auditions year round, but there are in-person ones usually held once in the spring and fall.

What sets FINESSE apart from other dance teams here in Minnesota is the integrity and ambition to improve. We definitely have lots of fun during practices and performances, but we take our dancing pretty seriously. All the details matter; everything from outfits, production, song selection, make up and even hair styles are meticulously planned out and thoroughly thought of. We definitely try to clean as much as possible and want our performances and projects to be a reflection of us so it’s important to focus up and keep drilling.

You can definitely learn more than just dance in FINESSE. There’s lots of project management involved and lots of opportunities for marketing experience, digital media, video editing and even learning how to cut music. It’s so amazing to see our projects come together and visually seeing the end product of our hard work.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is seeing everyone’s growth individually and watching a project come to life. Seeing others work hard for something they’re truly passionate about is something I really value in people and it inspires me to keep working towards my goals as well. FINESSE has really helped me see dance differently and I value my team like I value family. I’m sure my teammates would say the same thing as well. I also enjoy performing and seeing the reaction of the audience. There’s something so rewarding when you hear cheers on cheers while being surrounded with people who work just as hard as you do, if not even harder.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

FINESSE’s overarching goal is to nurture growth and ambition for those who want to try something a little more challenging in their dance journey. But more importantly, it’s about being open minded and educating ourselves about the history behind certain dance styles that we incorporate into our choreographies. It’s important that we learn the move correctly instead of just copying it because it “looks cool”. We pride ourselves in our ability to learn and apply our knowledge into pieces we’re working on because application is great practice.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/finessehomies
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOxEddeNZkynBw3KQGLBr_A

Image Credits
Focus Hawj Photography Tatyana Yang