Crystal’s love for dancing started at the young, young age of 4 when she was introduced to ballet. Ballet was all Crystal knew her entire life (over a decade) right up until she started studying at Melbourne Uni. Being eager with finding a dance community to dance and perform, she was fortunate enough to have stumbled upon the Flare booth at O-week and the rest is history. Immediately inspired by the passion, love and talents shared among the Flarians, she sought to help Flare grow.

From her role as Flare’s event officer in the 2018 committee, Crystal is excited to continue her committee journey as President to share this wonderful dance community. And most importantly, to continue dance, inspire, grow.

Tran officially started her dance journey in 2016. As a very timid and shy person with no experience in dancing, the environment was very outside of her comfort zone. However, her passion for dance kept her motivated to regularly attend dance classes and, along with the warm welcomes and friendly faces, she soon grew comfortable and is now a proud Flare member.

Tran was given many opportunities to experience different genres of dance through not only classes, but also performances and video projects. However, to this day, her favourite genres are still Choreographed street dance, Commercial Girls and Lyrical.

Tran is excited to be part of the committee again in 2019 as Vice President after being 2018 Sourcing Officer. Tran hopes to support the 2019 committee with their creative visions for Flare as well as provide warm welcomes to new and old faces.

Coming soon!

Abigail is a pink-haired, masters of engineering student from Melbourne Uni that is now your new secretary. She loves purple, potatoes, potato guns, and being the most helpful idiot on this side of the city.

For most of her life, she barely knew whether she liked dancing or not. As part of her curious nature, she tried dance a few years ago right here in flare, taking classes ranging from contemporary to break dance. It wasn’t easy for her, especially getting all the rejection emails, but somehow she persisted. She realized that this, dancing, was a passion of hers and nothing will stop her from finding joy in it.

As secretary, she hopes to give back to flare as much as the club has given to her. She wishes to uphold the high standard flare has had and possibly make it even better than it has been in the previous years!

Duy is the modest-sized rookie who entered Flare just about a year ago and applied to be your treasurer this year despite having his financial life on the brink of extinction due to shopaholic tendencies. Duy started his dance journey 6 years ago with the thought of trying to look cool and get girls with his sick moves. His hobbies include but are not limited to singing, playing the guitar while singing, and trying to cling onto his degree while Flare continues to consume his entire living soul. With that being said, Duy loves Flare and regards Flare as his second family, and the first family he’s had the pleasure to have here in Melbourne. He joins committee with the hope to make sure Flare continues to be a (financially stable) welcoming family like it was for him.

Kaho started dancing mid 2016 when he was accepted to his school’s dance club, after going for the audition on a whim after watching a step-up movie. From there he was trained in Contemporary and Hiphop styles, and experimented with many other styles of dance but still has yet to find the one that works. Despite living in a struggletown of trying to get good, he found his passion for dance continues to grow, and developed a love for the activity and the community.

Moving from Singapore to Melbourne, Kaho found Flare through a random google search and attended a holiday casual class. From there he made friends and got baited into Flare when the semester started. Joining Flare for a little over a year, he has made many meaningful connections and grew as a dancer. Now he is so deep in, he joined the committee, hoping to give back to the community that nurtured him.

Joy has always liked the idea of being a dancer, but never did much to become one except completing a dance performance subject in high school. She thought that would be all the dancing that she will ever do – until she found an extremely sassy and cool-looking club called ‘Flare’ at Uni.

Since joining in 2017, Joy has somehow gotten herself into Flare’s annual production and became a more ‘active’ member. Since then, Joy has participated in various performance classes, external gigs, cocktail night, video projects and other opportunities. Along the way, the awkward stumbling newbie learnt to become a more coordinated and worthy dancer who is proud to showcase herself as a member of Flare.

2019 is Joy’s second year on committee. Taking on her new role as the Events Coordinator, Joy is excited to create a unique and memorable year for Flare with the new committee.

Pearl is from Singapore.
Pearl actually dislike Pearls (boba).
Pearl is very shy around new humans.

People always ask: how long have you been dancing? Pearl always have trouble answering that. Pearl started with Ballet at the age of 5 and the years went on jumping back and forth in Dance and Badminton (this is why she can never give you the exact number). In 2018, Pearl found Flare and decided to stick to Dance (badminton became something that cause her injuries).

As a member of the committee in 2019, Pearl hopes to help Flare, members and also herself to grow, also aims to guide members to find fun, comfortable and healthy positive challenges in Flare.

Caitlin can be identified as ‘the tall one’ in class.

Caitlin began her dance journey back in Dubai when she was an awkward teen at 13. She was lucky enough to be exposed to a variety of dance styles, including ballet hip hop and jazz and finally became comfortable in her long and flimsy noodle body of hers.

Coming from such a small dance community back home, moving to Melbourne was a big shock. Through word of mouth she finally stumbled upon Flare at the 2018 Open Day, and signed up right away and has since spent way too much time and money on Korean food and Yochi.

Since joining Flare, Caitlin has been so so lucky to have expanded her friendship group and met tons of driven, talented dancers to surround herself with every day. She’s excited for 2019 to be a part of Flare not only on stage, but also behind the scenes as a graphics designer.

Likes: Comm Girls, Lyrical, Jontemp (minus floor work) FroYo, Hot Chips, and pants with the buttons down the side.

For Fiona, it all started when she tried out a ballet class during high school. While she trained in ballet for a few years, it was hip-hop that really peaked her interests.

Since discovering hip-hop, Fiona has been a part of few crews and often competed with them. The World Supremacy Battlegrounds was one such competition, with her crew coming 3rd nationally in 2017. In Fiona’s first year of studies, she joined Flare Dance Ensemble because it looked cool. However, she realized it was a super friendly place to learn and grow, and that they did mind-blowingly amazing productions, which inspired her passion for dance even more.

Joining the Flare 2019 committee, Fiona wants to give back to the community that has done so much for her. She hopes that she can inspire all dancers through her graphic designs as well as dance.

Likes: hip-hop, art, photoshopping memes & bubble tea (ironic because I’m lactose intolerant)!

Tim’s only previous dance experience began at the ripe old age of 5 years old, and lasted until he was around 7 or 8. Since then, his primary hobbies have been sports and gaming. He only recently realised how much fun dancing at parties were.

Tim joined Flare on a whim, only halfway through 2018. Itching for some sort of change, and after learning about how unbelievably cheap Flare membership is, he decided to begin attending some casual classes. Tim’s next whim was to sign-up for Flare apprentices, helping out in the 2018 Flare production. Going in with an open-mind, he encountered many friendly and encouraging faces. Some of these faces persuaded him to commit to whim number three and join the 2019 committee.

Tim plans to apply his skills as a computer science student to help out with anything technology, as well as ensuring the website is as not bad as possible. With enough time, and a little bit of luck, there might also be some other cool stuff coming out.

Growing up, Roger always admired dance, and wanted to give it a try, however he never found the time or courage to do so… until he bumped into the student run organisation called Flare.

Flare gave him the opportunity to finally give dance a try. That opportunity lead to Roger developing a genuine passion for dance and it has since then become a part of his daily life. Though he initially struggled in his first few months of classes, he eventually settled in thanks to the friendly and encouraging people inside of the club and was attending classes regularly. This allowed Roger to meet many talented and inspiring dancers and most importantly, he built many special friendships with a lot of Flarians.

As Ticketing Officer, Roger hopes to help Flare reach out to people with an interest in dance and allow them to go through the same experience as he did as well as encouraging current dancers to push themselves to challenge new genres of dance.

Likes: kpop, gongcha, coco, kbbq, sleeping, stuDYING

Dan started the dance journey at a ripe age of 18 when a spontaneous decision and an old friend convinced him to join Flare Dance Ensemble during Semester 2 O-Week 2017. Starting out with zero experience, the opportunities that FDE provided him acted as the scaffold to kick-start his journey in dance.

At first, dancing was just a casual hobby for Dan but throughout the years between 2017-2018, it became a full-blown passion from the friends he met that he can now call his fam. Learning from the best teachers, choreographers, and friends from Melbourne and Toronto (shoutout to NuMonic and Kindred Culture), Dan aims to instil the same growth mindset that was imparted to him from his teachers for anyone starting out as a new dancer and encourages people to find something they can take from dancing.

If you asked Angeline to describe herself in three words, she’d probably say ‘I don’t know’, pause, and then proceed to ramble on and list twenty different contradictory qualities because A) she’s way too indecisive, and not a very eloquent speaker. If, however, you asked her why she dances, she’d probably smile and say ‘because it feels good’.

Angeline accidentally stumbled across Flare in 2018 and oh boy is she glad she did (see, aimlessly scrolling through Facebook isn’t a complete waste of time). Despite already having years of dance experience, this new-found Flaremily pushed Angeline in new and exciting ways. She was exposed to styles she had never even heard of like house and waacking; was given the opportunity to teach and choreograph for casual classes; and had the honour of learning from so many talented and diverse dancers.

As the charity officer for the 2019 committee, Angeline hopes to connect Flare with the wider community and to help support others in doing what they love.

P.S. Crystal Y is not the Flare president. Crystal Ho is.
P.P.S. She likes street-style dance (inspired by Keone and Mari, Bo Park, Kinjaz, and Just Jerk Crew), Dancehall (by Paris Goebel), and Hip Hop. But she also likes dabbling into some commercial and kpop stuff.
P.P.P.S. This girl can be easily excitable, let’s be friends.

Her dream is to win a 50k/year sponsorship in an Overwatch gaming competition.

Crystal Yap is no stranger to dance having done ballet and been on stage since 9. Although having attended ballet school, Crystal lacked (A LOT OF) grace and poise as a ballet dancer but (by a miracle) has successfully completed her RAD exams up to Inter. Foundations, y’know the pointe shoes one. She then took up choreography classes for 2 years, where she competed alongside a Glen Waverley crew called the “Alpha Pack” in multiple dance competitions.

Upon discovering Flare in 2014, she is constantly inspired by the high level of creativity and challenges in all Flare classes. As videographer this year, Crystal aims to capture the hard work and dedication of the teachers and members through film, finding new and avant-garde ways to help enthral Flare’s growing audience.

After previously being secretary, Zach decided he wasn’t done with committing a disproportionate amount of time to volunteering at Flare’s Committee. Although being rejected for VP and videos, he eventually ended up in the videos team, who are delighted to welcome any budding videographers to signup for the committee apprentice program. If anyone is interested in the position next year, please contact our videos officers.

If you came here to read a biography, look elsewhere because this is a request going out to current and future flare members… Join committee, become part of a family that will help you grow in ways you wish you had known before. Cherish the uni days where your time was free and options aplenty. Because life gets harder, not because the things you do become harder, but because there is little time to do the things you love the most. Zach was and is still glad he joined committee.