Meet Diny Kim | Dancer, Choreographer, Owner of Rūts Dance Studio

We had the good fortune of connecting with Diny Kim and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Diny, how does your business help the community?
Representing Koreatown, LA – a melting pot of many different ethnicities, traditions, & lifestyles – Rūts Dance Studio is a place where all cultures can freely come into one space to connect & exchange through the language of dance. Rūts aims to be a home that encourages people to explore & cultivate themselves without boundaries – to learn your identity, discover your roots, and ground yourself in who you are. We believe in a community that challenges individuals to become fearlessly themselves, & through that, can ultimately become shifters of culture through their own movement and expression.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Dance started as a hobby that I was just so passionate about – I poured out all of my free time into this thing just because I loved it so much, and who knew it would eventually become my profession! It was definitely not easy to make this transition – it required me to sit down and really plan out my life. Setting tangible goals, learning to set my own routines & schedules, and actively working on my craft.

The biggest lesson that I learned was: nobody is going to get gigs for you! You have to put in the effort to create on your own, search for opportunities, & find your own network/connections. You also can’t get lazy with your training, it’s so easy to fall behind if you’re not constantly putting in the work to grow and improve your skills!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Koreatown LA has the best Korean food, hands down! I would definitely take them to the best local, hole-in-the-wall spots in the area to eat. Ktown is also known for its night life, so I definitely have to show them some kind of bar-hopping or pocha experience!

If they’re here longer, for a week, I personally love hiking, so maybe a hike at Griffith Park, and some secret view spots to see the cityscape at night!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
First and foremost, I want to give all glory and thanks to God. He’s done some crazy miracles in our lives not only to keep our dance studio open during covid, but to expand our business not once but TWO times!

I also want to give special thanks to my mom, who helped with all the construction and other practical things needed to help our studio thrive. She’s done so many things for us on the backend, and she deserves the world.

Lastly, I want to thank my sister and business partner, Eileen, for being such a backbone throughout this entire journey. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. She is such a visionary, and also a graphic design genius!

Website: www.therutsstudio.com

Instagram: rutsdancestudio

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/r%C5%ABts-dance-studio-los-angeles

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rutsdancestudio

Image Credits
Clay Dizon