When there’s an event on campus, Ken Kim and Tiffany Holt are often behind the curtain keeping things moving. Kim works for IMATS’ Audiovisual Technology Services team training professors and students how to use tech systems, and Holt works in Events Management mapping out the logistics.
“If I am the coordinator for an event where Ken is the assigned AV tech, we work together to make it happen,” said Holt.
Work, however, isn’t the only thing that these Barnard employees have in common. They also share a love for dance, albeit separately. Their devotion was on full display last fall, when they collaborated on a Zumba fundraiser for Columbia Community Service, which supports local community organizations in Harlem and Morningside Heights. Kim conceived the idea for a Zumbathon in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to bring the community together for a common cause. Holt and Barnard’s facilities supervisor Israel Caban led the classes while Kim assisted with the planning process and staff recruitment.
With Holt at the helm of the room instructing, dancers energetically followed along. It didn’t take long for Kim, who is also a registered Zumba instructor, to recognize Holt’s natural talent. “I knew from the way she was teaching that she was very good in salsa dancing,” he said. “The good coordination and musicality that she exuded showed she would be a good dancer.”
With a new academic year ahead, the two dancers are continually finding ways to keep up their moves.
Warming Up
Kim, who has been at Barnard for 15 years, and Holt, who arrived in 2020 to work on the Pandemic Response Team, were drawn to dance for different reasons. Holt, a Hawaii native, started ballet when she was 3 years old to help naturally treat her pigeon-toed feet instead of undergoing surgery.
Throughout her childhood, Holt said, “I was determined to work really hard to try and correct it as best [I] could using therapy and ballet.”
Before long, she was exploring tap, jazz, and tumbling. When she reached high school, an interest in hip-hop inspired her to try break dancing, which, said Holt, was a male-dominated sport. “I had grown up watching but had never tried it myself,” she said.
She attended “jams,” where people would come together and battle, and eventually competed in competitions domestically and internationally. That all came to a halt in 2009, when Holt was in a car accident that left her unable to walk. In addition to physical therapy, her doctor recommended exercise to help with the recovery, and Holt found a Zumba class that worked.
“It helped me so much in my journey being able to walk again and reintroducing joy back into my life,” she said.
Although Kim started dancing much later than Holt, he said that he has been practicing for half his life. He traced his interest back to high school, when a friend introduced him to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. Kim remembered being blown away by the dancers’ performances and resolved to learn their moves. That’s when he started competing in collegiate competitions.
“Astaire not only tap-danced, but he could sing and ballroom dance as well,” said Kim.
Taking the Stage
One of the best parts of dancing for Holt and Kim has been their respective communities. After discovering her passion for Zumba, Holt became licensed to teach in Honolulu and opened her own fitness business in 2010. She was eager to share her love for dance with others after realizing the positive force it had become in her own life.
“I love to help people who normally wouldn’t think to move, or [who] wouldn’t even try moving, to have fun,” Holt said.
Kim, who will often find a partner on the spot when he’s out dancing socially, agreed that rocking to music should be the kind of fun that flows. “You can just go and dance with anyone,” he said.
Such confidence is supported by the fact that Kim ballroom dances regularly throughout the City, at places like Stepping Out Studios and Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine Dance Studio. Over his decades-long dance career, Kim has competed locally, including in Columbia’s Big Apple Dancesport Challenge, the largest collegiate competition in New York City, and across the country.
Kim also served as the president of the NYC chapter of USA Dance, Inc (formerly the United States Amateur Ballroom Dance Association), where he left his mark by creating an annual ballroom dance competition. “It’s great to see ballroom dancing as an activity in [so] many television shows,” he said.
While Kim no longer competes professionally, he stays plugged in by working as a volunteer. In recent years, he honed his AV expertise to livestream the Big Apple Dancesport Challenge and to produce videos of performances at Stepping Out Studios.
Kim has also brought his love of dancing to campus, with the Zumba community he’s created from attending Holt’s classes and with trained student dancers. In 2013, for example, Kim really showed off his moves after dance major Denise Machin ’13 asked him to partner with her for her senior thesis project. The result was a dazzling display of performances by Machin and Kim, including the waltz and the international cha-cha.
The project was such a big hit that the Barnard Dance Department asked them to perform live at that year’s alumnae reunion. Today, Machin is Pomona College’s assistant director of Smith Campus Center and ballroom dance instructor.
Even though Kim and Holt are no longer competitive dancers, they each continue to two-step their way through performances and classes for the pure love of it. Zumba dancers can find Holt leading students at Columbia University’s Dodge Fitness Center and giving core classes at two locations in Harlem. Ballroom dancing aficionados shouldn’t be surprised if they see Kim waltzing about at different venues around NYC.
“Everybody does something in their spare time, so everyone has a story,” said Kim.
