#rainbowchild421

[sanstropfremir]

So I just read your post about taemin’s dancing style and how it’s awkward on anyone but him and I’ve always thought that the same applies to Sunmi. They’re both such interesting performers that have created their niches that apply only to them (Taemin’s for his otherworldly posed by a demon style and Sunmi has that playful ironic “I know something you don’t” style. Like in isolation their dances are a bit strange but the second they perform it it’s like magic and it works. So I just wondering if you had any thoughts about Sunmi as a performer.

i agree! i have many thoughts on sunmi as a performer, i think she's fascinating! she and taemin arrive at very similar conclusions, but use ultimately very different methodologies. i think the easiest way to describe this is that taemin cares about dance, and sunmi doesn't. both of their solo careers comment very heavily on the subversion of public perception (sunmi’s even more so that taemin’s), but taemin uses his ability as the vehicle for this comment, but sunmi uses her body. 

we consider the mark of a good dancer to be in total of their body, for obvious reasons. it's difficult to do, human beings function day to day by the power of autonomic nervous system functions, and a lot of musculatory responses can fall under that category. you don't really have to consciously think about how to walk until the ability to is taken from you. taemin very deeply cares about dance, it's intrinsically entwined with how he interacts with the world, and his physical control is a hallmark of his skill and dedication to the craft. the awkwardness in his movements comes not from way he makes the movements, but from the shapes he makes with those movements. he is complying to the qualifications that we set for a ‘good’ dancer, yet the choreographies themselves are full of experimental techniques and he doesn’t rely on the formulaic patterns of established kpop dance.

sunmi, on the other hand, almost exclusively relies on formulaic patterns. the awkwardness in her choreos comes from her refusal to comply to those same standards. she dances like she would rather be doing literally anything else, most of the time. the male gaze in kpop dominates how women are required to look and the way that their physical bodies inhabit space. it is especially expected of female dancers to be fluid and graceful, due to the pervasive misogynistic belief that women are supposed to be graceful in everything they do; it’s uncommon to have the same sort of leeway given to a female idol who is a ‘bad’ dancer (there objectively are no true bad dancers in kpop), than it is to a male idol. sunmi throws this on its head by purposefully not caring, by being ‘bad’ at dance. she does a lot of what we would consider to be either sexy or cute poses (depending on the song), but she refuses to give them power by marking them with transitional fluidity. she knows she's hot, and she knows we think she's hot, and no matter how uncontrolled or ungraceful her movements are, we’re still going to think she's hot. although the static poses that she often makes are seductive, she rarely lets the movements she takes to make those poses come through as seductive, as though this is just a routine she has to get through. and it is. she, like taemin, debuted illegally young and was undoubtedly subjected to a lot of gross shit, so her current body of work is a very clear subversion and reflection of that. taemin’s choreos are made for someone who is an insanely skilled dancer, sunmi’s choreos are made for someone who doesn’t want to dance. it's actually very interesting to watch dance covers of sunmi’s songs, because it's actually very easy to dance them ‘better’ that her, but by dancing them better you rob them of a facet of their power. 

i'm a little obsessed with the collab stage she did with taemin for mama 2019, where she joins him for move in the last chorus, because technically, she’s doing a terrible job of covering move; there’s very little fluidity and synchronicity in her body, and it’s especially obvious next to taemin. but because of who she is, this disregard for the choreography still honours the intention of it. and to come full circle back to the point i made at the conclusion of that post: although women tend to cover move technically better because they (usually) have a more thorough understanding of their own physical objectification, a woman’s terrible cover is the more subversive and the more accurate.

#sunmi #i went on a bit of a sunmi deep dive because i needed a break from thinking about the 8 hour photoshoot i did yesterday #and the 800 photos i now have to edit #thank you for sending this in!!! #i love sunmi and i love all the layers of subversion in her music #there's also further points to be made about how being subversive is basically her brand now and how that effects the work she makes #but id have to do a bit more research #this was fun!!! #please continue asking me questions about things!!! #kpop questions #kpop analysis #rainbowchild421 #text #group analysis #sunmi w

[turstrigo]

9 PEOPLE YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW BETTER

Tagged by @perelka-l​

Favorite Color: Blue, especially the deep dark shades

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Tagging @thegrumpyjournalist @lotus-of-light @chleby-i-ksiezyce @orangeannie @laydeadad @rainbowchild421 @alice-and-cheshire-cat @masquerading-brambles @aymayzing

#tag things

[sanstropfremir]

Okay I’ve gotta stop bothering you with all these questions but I don’t have anyone to talk with about kpop and you seem like someone who *knows* their shit about performance arts and I love reading your stuff so I’m going to keep asking questions. I was recently very obsessed with OnlyOneOf’s most recent comeback, Libido. Like from the song to the music video (my god did that make my queer little heart happy), to the DANCE. Like I’ve had dreams about this comeback (and I don’t usually even remember my dreams). So I was wondering how you felt about it cause there was a lot of backlash (though almost entirely undeserved from any angle people tried to take it from).

frankly i’m so surprised these boys are out there promoting with a fucking dick grab. actually i think its been censored but i definitely remember watching at least two music show stages with the full grab. i think the choreo is fun and doesn't at all deserve the backlash that's been leveled at it. regardless of if it is actually intended to be gay, this softer, more explicit take on adolescent male sexuality is nice to see and deserves to be seen as much any other aggressive red-blooded boy group concept. do i think it's outrage marketing or they're being forced to be overly skinshippy or whatever people are complaining about (i don't actually know the specifics i very carefully curate my online experiences)? no, not really. everything kpop is already optimized for marketability anyways so i don’t think it's that much of an issue if they want to put out something that’s aimed at a deliberately specific audience. if they were willing to take the risk with something like this it means they were probably pretty set on the idea regardless of what the backlash was going to be. i've watched a couple of their behind the scenes clips and they all look pretty chill about it; tbh my opinion is the artists should be allowed to do whatever they want (as long as they’re not being exploited, obviously), and it's the fans’ responsibility to respect artists’  boundaries between their public and private lives.

artistically, although i think the choreo is fun, it's a bit messy for me. there's a couple of transitions that could have been done better but eh. i think retconning tape measures and hiding them in their gloves is ingenious and I'm absolutely stealing that idea for reference. obviously this has big chained up vibes, so I'm not sure why people are so pressed about this because it's not like this is the first bdsm-y choreo kpop has ever seen (I know why people are pressed about this, vixx got shit for chained up and like every other comeback they did lmao). i LOVE the mv though, i think it's really beautifully shot and a lot more cinematic than we normally see from kpop group mvs. visually it's got the same feel as troye sivan’s blue neighbourhood trilogy, this soft-blue-filter-close-up-hands aesthetic that we’ve seen a lot of in younger generation lgbt content, so i have to assume its at least not an accidental reference? (it's common in holland’s mvs).

like i said, this soft-explicit adolescent male sexuality is a nice change from the more aggressive takes we’ve seen come before and these boys have stones of fucking steel to be promoting with this choreo, so they’ve got all the respect from me.

#tbh any time i watch it i just get distracted by junji's hair #i had that pretty blue grey for a couple of months and i miss it...... #but also i love my orange mullet #also the costumes are so weird i kinda love them #very late 80s/early 90s lounge suit vibes #onlyoneof #kpop questions #text #rainbowchild421 #group analysis #ooo w

[sanstropfremir]

I’ve noticed that the best stages have less of a storyline and more of a setting. Like BTOB are backstage of a concert or set in some point in the past, Ateez are pirates or over throwing the gov, SF9 are in a gang but the second we start going off on “sacrificing our soul to save a child and now we’re in hell and Felix is a demon” I get lost but also the stage itself seems to get lost. Like I can’t anchor myself and the cool gimmicks they’re pulling don’t have much of impact on me so the stage doesn’t remain in my mind. Also this is probably the adhd talking but the more random shit you throw at me without any reason the less likely it sticks in my brain. I can’t tell you anything that happened in TBZ’s first stage besides I thought the dancer’s coats were cool but I am never going to forget Seonghwa in a corset marching down that line of dancers shooting down a fucking kraken. This is also why I really like Ikon stages-little to no story to wrap my pea brain around. They’re just singers, rappers, and dancers doing their thing on a fancy stage and though I adore the drama of the musical stages (when done well) I can also appreciate Ikon sticking to their guns and just giving me a good time. Like I’d rather have fun with a simple yet effective hype stage than sit through 6 minutes of 15 layers of bullshit “depth” that adds nothing to a lackluster performance. Like come on guys we’re not writing a philosophy paper, I’m just here for Bobby to shake his ass so let’s keep it moving.

i know what you mean! although obviously i love it when there’s a fun and well produced storyline, this show is not deep enough to be pulling out the big jesus guns on the second full stage, especially if the performance isnt already at top level. 

i feel like i’ve never actually like, said this in any of my reviews because i don’t even think about it anymore because its like, literally the first thing you learn in design school but youre absolutely right, its the setting that matters, not necessarily the narrative. after all, thats what the set is there for: to establish setting. in kpop they name this as ‘concept,’ which is really just a different word that ticks all the same boxes. but having clarity of setting is so important. it tells us when and where and gives us reference so we have a grounding, and then we can watch pretty boys sing and dance and do backflips or whatever. it never needs to be that deep but a good, well thought out setting does so much work subconciously and often people dont realize until something is a little off and they cant name why. the work of a designer is invisible a lot of the time, but its there in even when it doesnt seem like it. 

obviously for this show every group is going to keep ramping up the scale and i really do hope that the groups kick back more in the way that btob did, which was focus on putting on a good performance in a fun setting. ive seen a lot of people saying how the rtk stages have been more interesting and thats because for rtk the groups were doing exactly this; taking a song and dropping it into a fresh concept. oneus’ lit, pentagon’s follow, verivery’s mansae, too’s hard carry, verivery’s photo, oneus’ be mine, onf’s it’s raining all have super clear settings but not necessarily any narrative; theyre all just fun to watch! i’d love to start seeing more of that in the next stage. at least i want to see skz and tbz loosen up on whatever theyve been doing, because trying to grasp at the ultra-grand is whats consistently putting them at the bottom of the rankings. just have some fun boys!!

#kingdom #kpop questions #i went back and watched all the rtk stages recently so thats why i remember who did what #anyways there's a longer rant about my opinions on tbzs stages/trends in my episode 4 review if you want #tldr is they shot themselves in the foot with the connected stages nonsense in rtk #and they dont have a good enough ad or designer to actually pull it off #ANYWAYS #im looking forward to boys being dumb and having fun in episode 6 #text #rainbowchild421 #kingdom asks

[sanstropfremir]

On boy do I want to read a long ass post on your favorite choreos. I’m looking forward to this one!

ask and ye shall receive!! i was actually just thinking of making a post to ask what people wanted me to do in place of a big kingdom review on thursday, since i dont think there’s going to be any actual stages for me to review, so the timing is perfect!!! i’ll probably stick to actively promoted or ‘official’ kpop choreos because i will most definitely get too deep in the weeds because that’s just who i am as a person. 

also i see your other ask!! i will get to it slightly later today!! i think you might be a new-ish follower and i stopped adding the disclaimer to the reviews after the second one i think, but i actually have a degree in theatre design and over a decade of experience working in various performance genres, so i’d like to think i know my way around! and please please keep sending questions in, i LOVE talking about performance and i don’t get to do it very much right now because obvious reasons. the fact that i can’t argue with my classmates about the audience/art relationship at the pub is KILLING ME and talking about kpop online is my only solace

#to be fair i also talk about kpop a lot irl because i have a friend that i work with frequently whos research/practice is specifically relat #literally having just one friend in the korean entertainment industry puts you at under six degrees of separation from EVERYONE #this got very offtrack but whatever #oh im excited this is gonna be such fun #text #rainbowchild421

[sanstropfremir]

Okay so for the rap stages I can’t really comment on the quality of rapping because none of their stuff was my preference and I’m not really a hip hop fan but I definitely have opinions on the stages so this going to be long (apologies in advance). First Mayfly team gets an immediate deduction for that one part where Chan says “spell color with a u” we don’t need that Anglo propaganda in this house. I will say they immediately get points back for Minhyuk just being there because I love that man. I thought he had a baseball bat at first and I got excited cause I thought he was going to smash something which would have been fun. Also his outfit was the best. Loved that coat and whatever was going on with his hair (it was too classy compared to the others but it makes him seem like the leader). Basically all I’m saying is I’m a simp for Minhyuk and everyone else can go home. Besides that, I think the stage had too much going on. Changbin’s painting part was weak and maybe the lyrics gave context but why has he being so rude! Was he trying to be badass by spilling milk on someone? My reaction was the same as that one girl from Weeekly who looked OFFENDED. Hongjoon’s part was good and I like that it was more simple. I think I heard him say “idol” at one point which I’m going to assume is him making some jab at the haters who belittle idol rappers but considering he was rapping so slowly and in that usual idol rapper talk/rap style I don’t really think he made his point well lol. Loved the ending though where it goes dark and then explodes with color-the screens were used really well. I think the choruses where the best part of the song but the verses fell a bit flat. I’m also glad they wore white and had their stage be more colorful. If I’m not mistaken, they had a message about like unity and how we’re all the same which I appreciated. Final thought: They should have toned it down and gone for impact over quantity. Okay so for the other team, I loved the opening with Sunwoo on the bike high-fiving Hwiyoung. That was cool. What I appreciate more about this stage is that it’s more about the rapping, the charisma, and the interaction between the members. The song was less impactful but the members carried themselves better. I think if actual rappers were evaluating this stage they’d prefer this performance over the first. You know how rappers have that thing about not being mainstream and how they don’t like wannabe idol rappers well the first performance basically epitomizes everything they hate. And like do I agree with edgy rappers-no they can get their heads out of their asses but do I think they have a point when it comes to idol rappers usually being waterdowned and more marketable, absolutely. Like their stage presence, in my opinion, made this way more interesting and immersive. I mean fucking Bobby was smiling the entire time. And props to Sunwoo-he really held his own compared to the others. Also Hwiyoung having more than one line-absolutely unheard of. I don’t know why they went black and white for the last part with the paint. It was cool but it would have stood out more if it was in color (the first time I watched it I didn’t even notice the paint but also I watched it on my phone first thing after waking up so I wasn’t fully conscious). Now for things I really disliked: the autotune was absolutely atrocious, Hwiyoung I love you but whyyyy?!? Like his rapping was pretty good but it was absolutely ruined by the autotune. And I have an intense gripe with autotune so this is totally just a me thing. Personally this stage was more fun even if I didn’t like the song as much and I prefer it to the other but neither are very high on my rewatch list. Also I should add I am absolutely biased towards iKON and SF9 so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

firstly, i am canadian AND i live in the uk how dare you come into this house and spread your incorrect spelling opinions everywhere. how dare you

this is just a general observation, but what on earth did they put in these stages to get everyone so heated... every response ive seen so far has been ‘i dont listen to rap but....(has very strong opinion on the rap stage)’ which i find DELIGHTFUL. i have no skin in this game and i love that its riling people up.

I was going to put a rather accusatory deconstruction of authenticity and our cultural biases around the myth of the auteur here, but i decided against that because ive clearly been at grad school for too long and no one needs my postulating. i found both these stages to be lackluster over all and im very much not the audience for rap so i like hearing what others have to say, it gives me more perspective. 

#kingdom #i dont care about the debate between idol rapper and 'rapper' rapper because its just an extension of the authenticity vs spectacle debate #and like ive said before #i do not care about authenticity in art #spectacle is just as a meaningful and yall can fight me i will die on this hill #woo im being spicy today apparently! #kpop questions #text #rainbowchild421 #kingdom asks

[sanstropfremir]

Hey so I was wondering what you thought about Seventeen’s choreos? I don’t know if you’re familiar with them but my favorite choreo of theirs is Call Call Call (also it’s an absolute banger and my favorite song of theirs). That’s a pretty general question but do you think they live up to their image of being one of the best groups dance wise?

you sent this in before i published my hoshi response where i said i watch zero seventeen content but that's fine! i have actually seen a decent amount of their choreographies, and although yes the whole group is at a very high skill level and their synchronicity is phenomenal, there isn’t really enough in my eyes that differentiates them from a high level dance troupe (other than the whole singing at the same time thing). it’s very satisfying to watch a lot of people move in sync, but i have a very small brain and 13 people on stage at all times is too many for me to pay attention to in the way that kpop wants you to pay attention to. my brain is pretty hardwired to look for recognizable ‘main characters’ or narratives within things, and with the speed in which svt has to swap out centre because there's 13 of them, i almost immediately lose track. i feel like every time i watch an svt video i see a dude i’ve never seen before. 

i wrote my dissertation partially on this actually, but there’s a direct link between narrative and emotional investment. if you can craft a compelling narrative around a character, make them relatable to the audience in some way, the audience becomes much more willing to be emotionally involved and engaged with the material. this is a basic storytelling tenet, but kpop pretty much functions the same way. and with groups that are larger than 7-8 people, if the time distribution is even, it's very difficult for me to get a solid grip on who anyone is. plus, the higher number of people in a group, usually the lower the percentage of performers who have good enough stage presence to make it past that short screentime window. i like to watch things that change shape a lot, and although svt does do a lot of very beautiful formation changes, those 13 people are on stage the whole time. with a smaller sized group there’s a lot more options for the physical numbers on stage. i’ve also not really been able to parse what svt’s signature is? other than having a lot of members and being very good at dance. not that those are bad things; their music is generally very listenable, and when you are dancing in that big of a group you need everyone to look uniform or it gets messy really fast. but they just doesn’t hit for me. i think the most interesting choreo of theirs that ive seen is don’t wanna cry. 

so yes, i do think their choreos are very cool and they are one of best dance-based groups on the scene currently, but i don’t engage much with their content because they don’t have enough of a distinguished style and driving emotional factor for me.

#seventeen #i have incurable 'i must look for the main character' disease because my brain is pea sized #i do occasionally listen to their music #i know for a fact that fallin flower and dont wanna cry are on my general bg playlist #but personal style and charisma + interesting choreo + good song are the three things that get my brain in gear #and if one of the three is missing it dont hit #my pea brain is very fickle #kpop questions #kpop dance #text #rainbowchild421 #group analysis #svt w

[sanstropfremir]

So I’ve been really curious about when harnesses got popular in kpop since one of your posts a while back and I’ve been keeping my eye out for them in the older performances I watch. The oldest I’ve noticed so far is in Brown Eyed Girls Kill Bill stages which came out in 2013. GaIn almost always wears one (the only stage I’ve found so far that she’s not, she’s wearing a corset/pair of stays situation instead) and I’m pretty sure it’s a different one/type in each stage so it’s a consistent choice. She’s also wearing one in the mv. I mean it’s not surprising giving BEG’s more mature concepts and GaIn’s usual stuff.

tumblr user rainbowchild421 doing the lord's work, thank you!! other than probably some isolated singular incidents you're likely right that this is one of the first deliberate choices in kpop specifically (and i mean not a kpop group doing something in japan). i'm not surprised that it's coming out of a very heavily western (of both types) referenced concept, but i am a little bit surprised that it's only 2013? i feel like i was expecting to see something in the mid 2000s but also i think any earlier is probably not going to be as intentional as this, which is pretty clearly still tied to its kink roots. from my (very, very) slow beg deep dive, a harness use is pretty in line with what i would expect from them. i'm also not surprised it showed up in a girl group first either, since harness wearing on women seems to fly far less remarked on in girl groups. or maybe just less remarked on by me, since it's a related but different type of scandalous.

#kpop questions #....do i need to make a specific kpop harness tag??? has it gotten to that point????? #i can start a beg tag tho excellent #brown eyed girls w #im being slow on the uptake this week its been very cold and i am unfortunately coldblooded and tired all the time #also quite a few big questions came in so thank you <3 but also i gotta research and think a lot. brain smooth and struggling #have not been feeling being able to write but im trying to get back in the swing of it #ive been trying to fix my sleep schedule and its just #making me more tired. i would like to return my brain and request one with proper working circadian rhythms #text #answers

[sanstropfremir]

Didn’t queendom have a thing where instead of experts they had special guests that were like random people. I think they had one round where they had like grandmothers voting (I could be wrong but I have a vivid image of a shot during one of the queendom stages of a bunch of old women). Like it would have been interesting if they had a round where the judges were like school children or housewives or like construction workers or school teachers and the groups had to figure out how to put on their usual spectacles but cater it to these really specific groups. I want to see SKZ try do their regular edgy stuff but adapt it for kindergartners. Now THAT would be a show.

i have never seen a single thing related to queendom but i will lose my shit if this is true. this is exactly what kingdom should be doing!!! bring in some normal people!!! i would LOVE to watch these groups figure out how to make a stage for schoolchildren!! this is a thing i liked more about rtk, the theme of each stage actually felt more like a ‘challenge,’ like they had to adapt a seniors’ song/do a collab/whatever. the themes for kingdom are not really challenges. yea they sure are logistical challenges, but ‘no limit’ is like, the least artistically challenging theme ever. slap down some actual rules and lets see what the groups can come up with! i want to see some creative problem solving!

#kingdom #queendom #the stages for rtk were also a lot more creative because they had limited technical space and ability #i dont think ive talked about this before but mnet kinda fucked everyone #by giving them this massive stage and no limitations #speaking as an artist its actually very difficult to make work when you have total free reign #having limitations means that you have something tangible you can push up against to test the boundaries of what you can do #limitations can make you more creative - not less #kpop questions #text #rainbowchild421 #kingdom asks