“Virus choreography” – the ultimate speciality of 2nd generation idols that the 3rd generation has yet to conquer

For Kpop fans from the 2nd generation, the concept of “virus choreography” is too familiar. However, the 3rd generation idol groups have not created the choreography that can cause global fever yet.

What is a “Virus choreography” and why does it play such an important role?

The “virus choreography” is one of the aces that contribute to the worldwide wave of Kpop, alongside its music. Not only did it help the music of idols to be identified but also created a worldwide dance cover trend. The special thing of “virus choreography” is that everyone, in any gender, of all ages, regardless of whether or not a Kpop fan, knows and dances to the song’s main choreography.

The “virus choreography” is so simple that once you look at it, you can remember the main movements immediately. Most importantly, movements and music must be perfectly connected to each other, contributing to creating a strong spreading effect and “stimulating” the listeners’ interest when hearing the main part of the song.

In addition, “virus choreography” also plays a huge role in helping the song stay in the audience’s memory even though they only watched the song once. When they heard the song somewhere, they would immediately think of the song’s choreography or even dance immediately without first rehearsing. This is something that only “virus choreography” can do.

Looking back at the global dance trends of 2nd generation idol groups:

“Gee”, “Hoot” – SNSD

When it comes to “virus choreography”, the first name to mention is definitely SNSD’s “crab dance” in “Gee“. This dance has made a significant contribution to Gee becoming an explosion in the Kpop market at that time and a step closer to bringing the name of SNSD from a rookie to “national girl group”. Not only has it become popular in Korea, but “crab dance” has also received love from thousands of fan all over the world.

After creating a trend all over Asia with their “crab dance“, 6 months later, the SNSD girls continue to cause storms with a unique “archery dance“, shown exactly as the lyrics of the song and “hit the heart” of thousands of fans.

“Mister” – KARA

If this hip-shaking choreography of KARA isn’t mentioned, it will be a big lost. The same as “Gee” of Girls’ Generation, “Mister” is the track that had pulled KARA’s names to the top with many impressive records. “The butt shaking” dance has even become KARA’s trademark ‘til now.

“Sorry, Sorry” – Super Junior

Among all the girl group, the only boy group on this list is 13 boys from Super Junior with the world famous “sorry dance”. “Sorry Sorry” has given the kings of 2nd generation K-Pop many record that was hard to even think about at that time.

Abracadabra – Brown Eyed Girls

Last but not least is the once famous “hip-shaking dance” of Brown Eyed Girls. The addictive beat along with the choreography of hips shaking along to the beat of “Abracadabra” has created such a huge trend of covering the song in the K-Pop dance cover community, giving Brown Eyed Girls their impressive fame.

Above are just one of many examples of 2ng generation’s hit tracks’ choreography. The dance is like a must-have formula to specify each idol’s comeback.

Why there hasn’t been any world-famous choreography of the 3rd generation idols?

Taking a look at the main force of the 3rd generation idols such as EXO, BTS, WANNA ONE, SEVENTEEN, BLACK PINK, TWICE, Red Velvet,…it can easily be seen that they have one thing in common: the sharpness and creativity in every dance moves. The biggest difference between 2nd and 3rd generation idols is dance formation. While 2nd gen idols mostly focus on their moves and tend to refrain from changing formation, 3rd gen idols seem to focus on formations as one of the most important points of their performance.

The main choreography in the song of 2nd generation idols is mainly the “viral” moves so they are easy to do and repeated in the song. On the contrary, in the songs of 3rd generation idols, the main choreography is the most skilled part of the whole song, so it is often difficult to follow immediately, and that is why, for the 3rd generation idols, is it difficult to create a globally “viral dance” that is popular among all ages

It’s not that the 3rd generation idols do not have popular choreography. We can name some of the idols’ recent unique choreography such as BTS‘ “packback kid dance” in “Go Go“, the “shrimp dance” in “Shine” of Pentagon. But these moves are only popular in the Kpop fan community because they are originally very famous and internationally well-known dances.

Kpop is still changing day by day, audiences’ tastes also change, the trend of choreography also changes. In the Korean music market today, if idol groups are not constantly changing concepts, music and dances, they will be considered boring and without breakthroughs. It is for this reason that idol group of the 3rd generation must constantly create and focus on their techniques. Because more and more talented idol groups debut every day, if they don’t quickly prove their skills, they will be quickly forgotten by the audience.

Source: K14