Quick blurb reviews

[arbitrary_greay]

EDIT: Lolololol, Stranger is a total Jpop song. Mostly Avex, but with some other things. 1 2 3 4 (Well, the chorus is anyways. The rest of it is that inferior-Lucifer rehash I was worried about. Thank goodness this isn't the title track, because this way I get my intense Lucifer dancing anyways.)

Comments

[arbitrary_greay]

I love the signature hopping move. XD Loved it in Mirotic and Roudou Sanka, too. Making it the signature move is so amusing, although Shinee manage to pull it off with dignity somehow.
Man, Shinee's choreo always comes off like a legitimate dance crew routine. Not just formations in terms of location, but lots of body positioning formations, and actual spatial awareness.(Can't wait for them to do that hopping chorus down a walkway XD) They really are the new DB5K, but sharper for being so skinny, and more electronic music than tribal.

UGH, THIS. It's all so contained and controlled, minimal movements to snap into the next pose. Even f(x) has slightly more dynamic dances. The Gangsta Boy dance is very Replay-like, where the point of the moves is in the motions themselves, not the pose they finish in.
Choreography that's focussing on sync and poses can still be dynamic:

The biggest factor here seems to simply be TEMPO. The Boys, Hoot, and RDR all have an infuriatingly laidback tempo and tone without being swagga-chill like Replay and Gangsta Boy. That dance break in U-19 is dynamic on par with Rhythm Nation. Do want SNSD doing choreography like this again. (So worth geting up at 4:30AM for. Especially since there were two feed with different camera angles, so here's the other one. It better shows the formations and has less closeups. The ending for U-19 in the embed is kind of nerfed by the closeup.)
Gonna stop now. No point linking the SKE ITNW-esque perf because I know SNSD's never going to give me that again. The RDR Dream Concert intro was in fucking 2010.

[just_keep_on]

Choreography that's focussing on sync and poses can still be dynamic:
Can't we say that that's popping? That clip of U19 seemed to have more movement than poses in their choreo though I always find it hard to compare J-pop and K-pop choreo because I find that there is a different emphasis/expectations when it comes to freezes. For example, when the girls hit the freezes (poses) in the U-19 clip, they don't exactly freeze - there's still shifting, like when models pose during photoshoots. We don't expect them to be static when they hit those poses - the emphasis is not on the freeze, either, it's on the different, original expression that each girl adds to the pose (i.e. the shifting).

Compare this to The Boys, when they pose for the "Just bring the boys out" line before the chorus. The emphasis is on sync, hence why when there are freezes or poses, they make sure to be static. There's an expectation of them being static, frozen, and they fulfill that with small, individual variations. This is something seen in much of their "mature" choreography, i.e. Genie - I think this difference is part of what captivated the Japanese audience. This is also why I loved doing those second by second commentaries because they were always so in sync and I loved finding those moments when they inserted their own style into the choreo to make themselves stand out from that sync. Basically, I agree that part of what makes choreo interesting are the movements that lead into a pose, but I prefer that there also be an emphasis on the pose itself, more the interplay between fluidity and hard stops seen in popping.

re: "laidback tempo" vs "swagga-chill": Wouldn't it be less about tempo (BPM) and more about meter (time sig)? Or the interpretation of it through choreo? I'd say it still goes back to image/concept. Actually, it's pretty interesting how the choreo has changed to support their "maturation" - or rather, what is interpreted as "young" choreo vs "mature" choreo, not to mention style of music. (Because look at older artists like Kan Miyoun, whose choreo has been mostly posing and such. Again, very much curious to see how Shinhwa's choreo will be for Venus.)

[arbitrary_greay]

Locking is the style more about constant movement while popping is is more about poses, imo. But you're right, this choreo is shifting all of the time. Locking has so much more influence on Jpop dance, I see actual locking moves all of the time. The chorus does get kind of static Hoot-chorus-esque, but even then in between the pose-based main melody there's shifty chaos where Hoot has rigid sync for the "shu-shu-shu" hook.
Ooh, definitely see what you mean about the contrast with The Boys. In The Boys chorus it's like "pose, pose, pose, pose" all Vogue-like, where U-19 is more like "snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, shift-back." The initial poses for "girls generation make them feel the heat" especially seem to me to be explicitly not to be popped into.

Hmm, we know that this pose-based style was codified with Genie, and Kissing You and ITNW were more movement-based, but what about GG? (Fucking hell, searching for GG lives is a pain.)

First, there are the shenanigans freestyle sections, but it seems like there's more formation shifting, as well. The chorus is somewhat static, with a similar "move but return to pose" aesthetic. The instrumental sections right before the verse are still very dynamic, though.
The main differences I'm taking away here are that there are more moves packed in per second, necessitating more movement, but also that the moves tend to be full-body changes, not just single body-part shifts, so even the sections that seem to be the same pose-shift style as current choreo comes off more dynamic. I'm getting a better feel for the difference between Jaewon and Rino choreo, though, as Mr. Taxi is clearly more in line with this than Genie. So then The Boys is Jaewon doing his best Rino choreo impersonation?
(Also @_@ Jessica's voice is much deeper and less squeaky here. Where did that Jessica go? Damn bleach...)

The only precision dance-based Jpop group right now is Perfume. Laser Beam kind of SNSD-like, but is still at a faster pace than most recent SNSD choreo, but huh, even Spice seems more like Shinee choreo. Less members means that formations aren't so much about location coordination but timing coordination and lots of body-shape coordination relative to each other. Rarely are all three members in the same pose at the same time. And the chorus, again, is at a fast pace to put the emphasis on the sync of the movements rather than the poses.