[Guest Post] The 2012 K-Pop Cover Dance Festival

By William Schwartz

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This weekend Gyeongju hosted the 2012 Hallyu Dream Festival. The event is a major promotion of K-Pop artists, and has been marketed explicitly to foreigners for the sake of Korean tourism. By and large the event has been too rich for my blood. The two major events, Friday and Sunday night, were star-studded performances by multiple famed Korean groups, and were sold out, leaving only hopers to wait in line for spare tickets. I took part in the third event, on Saturday night, with a much smaller audience- the Cover Dance competition.

Cover dancing is when a group of people, for fun and exercise, dance to a recording of a popular song. I'd never heard of this phenomenon before I came to Korea, but from what I can tell, it's an important part of K-Pop's popularity. Shortly after I started at Dongguk University, I saw a cover dance performance (labelled on the poster as "musical") where students performed cover dances for a large group. Not all of the songs were K-Pop, though none were of Western origin.

The competition consisted of thirteen teams, from eleven countries, from six continents. (the United States, Brazil, Hungary, Australia, Nigeria, India, Thailand, Japan, the Phillipines, Japan (2), Russia (2). I don't know enough about K-Pop to distinguish them based on the songs they covered. However, as to the dancing technique and outfits of the teams, I paid quite a bit more attention, and was quite surprised by what I saw.

I don't especially like K-Pop. I don't hate it, but the genre music as a whole doesn't really appeal to me. Watching the cover performances, however, I felt keenly aware of the fact that there was far more at work here than mere sound. Spectacle was an important, inherent part of each performance. I'm not familiar with the original videos on which the performances were based. Regardless, the cover groups moved with an intensity and coordination that required immense dedication and practice. This was no mere imitation of industry standards. They had taken the music and were dancing to it at their own personal beat, creating something that, if not wholly original, was still a markedly individual act of expression.

Where I felt this most keenly was when gender was involved. Several groups consisted of women, but were covering bands consisting of male performers. Even the ones that covered women groups, there was surprisingly little sexualization. Only one group (one of the Japanese) dressed and performed in a way that indicated a primary focus on sexual expression. There were elements of it in all of the acts, but by and large all of the performers were trying to communicate something else. What exactly is difficult to put into words (such is the nature of interpretative dance). Aggression, cooperation, continuity, synchronization, acrobatic motion…really, it'd be easier to just watch it yourself. I was particularly impressed by the Hungarian group, which was outright butch- I don't use this word with negative or lesbian connotations. Rather, I'm unfamiliar with any other word in the English language that can better describe non-masculine aggressive behavior without making an inherent v alue judgment.

Many of the performances, between costuming and deliberate dance step, demonstrated ideas to me that I'd never really considered before as having any kind of genesis in pop music. The performers in the Thai and Indian teams were just about gaudy- again, not a word I mean to use negatively, it's just that I'm not familiar with any positive equivalent in the English language that works as well. One of the performers on the Thai team managed to do his hair up in such a way that the emcees asked him how exactly he did it- no clear answer was forthcoming. Understandable given that the emcees spoke English and Korean, and had to speak to many of the teams with the help of an interpreter.

The entire performance was filmed by Arirang TV. Unfortunately, I don't know when or where the footage can be viewed, though the emcees explained at multiple points that they were saying certain odd lines (like "after the break") for the benefit of the recording. I rather expect that it will be available to view easily at some point. In addition to the cover dances the K-Pop groups Rainbow and A-Jax also performed. Their more professional performances were a marked contrast- definitely more sexualized for one. Rainbow got big cheers from the section of the theater filled with Korean servicemen. The main singer for A-Jax knew exactly what his fans wanted as well, outright taunting them with the slow unbuttoning of the shirt covering his manly, manly chest.

By and large, the focus was definitely on the individual performers. I really liked the way one of the Nigerians put it, when he was asked why they did cover dances. He compared it to distance running (which apparently he does professionally). He said that you need anger to motivate yourself to continue through all the way to the end. With cover dance, he could let loose and simply express himself, and that made him happy. It's a curious thing to see so many people engaged in an activity which they clearly love with a relatively minor award at the end- Korean Public Transport Cards, though presumably the Korean Tourism Board funded their trip here. These were the top thirteen teams out of nearly two thousand. It showed through in their sheer poise and dedication.

Cover dancing as a whole, I think, encapsulates a lot of what makes Korean pop culture popular internationally. Even though its very existence is a copyright violation, the Korean government outright encouraged cover dancing through this competition. While you can certainly dig through to deeper, more cynical motives, this is an industry and culture that is extremely perceptive to the desires of their international fanbase, and rolls with what the fans want instead of dictating terms.That attitude alone is a far better advertisement than anything money could buy.

 

Official website : www.coverdance.org