#and yixing and his attachment to huang xiao and qiao zhi.....also very cute

[sanstropfremir]

hi! swf anon here

i agree w ur points. i don’t think the mission was very fitting? mnet had them essentially do an individual mission but mix matched the crews together and do a Group performance… in the episode, no one really cared to work together. instead they were more focused on wanting to stand out. i thought all the performances were v lackluster so i’m hoping for more? but my expectations are VERY low because the preview dance performances for the next ep looked v bad. each crew has more dancers to fill space and do fun formations but like, also? it seemed v poorly produced (stage design is literally them in a big ass empty stage). and that more doesn’t mean better because some stages looked v disorganized.

also, it seems like the show is more focused on ‘idol dancing’ if that makes sense? and that’s why it’s shot and edited that way. because chaeyeon is on it, there has been a lot of discussion of what counts as dancing vs idol dancing. also if idols can be considered as dancers. (the same argument that idol rappers are not rappers, etc.) taeyong was thrown in the mix because he’s one of the judges and people don’t think he’s Valid to be one.

also, what is unique to street battle dancing? i’m not familiar w it. and honestly i feel like boa is the only one making sense on the show. i like her comments and why she chose a crew as the better performance.

(this is a jumble of thoughts! sorry. i’m not on my laptop.)

no worries at all! your jumble makes perfect sense to me. i''m sorry this got very long and is mostly me rambling, i guess it's tit for tat at least!

honestly i would rather them doing big groups on an empty stage than whatever those massive quarry sets were, because at least we'll be able to see the choreo a little better. and you're absolutely correct more does not at all mean better. i am definitely a little confused on the priorities of the show, since they seem to be trying to incite the dance vs kpop dance conversation but don't actually seem to be doing it in a constructive way? i haven't watched the full episodes so i can't confirm, obviously, but from what i've seen they mostly just seem to be fueling the division between the two. i talked about this with the idol rapper thing during the collab kingdom stages but idol dance serves exactly the same function as idol rap; it's a part of the form of idol performance. it is a type of dance, and there are certainly idols who are very good at dance, but idol dancers and idol dance is not pushing or innovating the art of dance as a field. it's simply a different set of skills that serve a different function in a different form of art. it's kind of like trying to ask a fashion designer to be a performance costume designer. yea, ostensibly it's the same skills that came from the same place, and yes there are people that can do both, but they are specialized for their specific fields.

personally, of any current popular idol they could have picked, i think taeyong is a better choice than most. he's got a very well known face, he's a leader so he's used to being variety show material, and although he does dance like an action figure animated by suspicious mystical forces, he does actually care a lot about learning and acquiring new skills (see the fish surgeon incident), so he's not about to go onto the show wholly unprepared. not saying he's going to provide the most helpful feedback, but he's probably gonna be better than some other idols they could have picked, at least. and honestly? from what i've seen so far, i don't actually think there's a lot of dance happening that i would consider not idol dance, so i think it's probably fine that 2/3 judges are idols.

like i said in the tags of my previous post, battle dancing + street dance in general are much more focused on technique than idol dancing is. also most of it is freestyle. it's about arranging moves in combination to music in a fresh and interesting way that has a good structure and strong musicality. i linked the final from battle pro 2019 in my first post, but it's a little hard to explain what's going on, so instead i'm going to use mostly battle examples from street dance china here, because it's also a show about street dance that uses idols/celebrities as a way to bring in viewers, but they are also bringing in judges and dancers active in the global street dance scene.

this is one of my favourite battles from season 3, it's one round from a 4v4 where each dancer is trying to garner points for their team to avoid an elimination. the great thing about this battle is that it shows the strengths and weakness of different styles in battle dancing. this particular music works very well for two of these dancers, chunlin (second) and bouboo (fourth), but it doesn't work that well for klash (third), who is a bboy. you can also see how the editors of sdc actually put in post all the different moves that each dancer is doing, which i think is great and shows all the bits of technique that come together for each freestyle.

this is a 3v3 from the fourth season, where the first round is hiphop, second round is bboy, and third round is waacking (there are two other rounds after, but they cut rochka v bouboo from this edit and only showed c lil v qiao zhi, the bboys). the first round is VERY close to a draw, and rochka (long dreads) actually beats bouboo in the second round (bouboo is rochka's teacher, they're both french hiphop champions). qiao zhi beats c lil in the bboy rounds because he focuses more on technique and listening to the music, as opposed to doing just showy and experimental moves (you can see qiao zhi gesturing at his ears in the second round at the end, saying that c lil isn't listening). and in the waacking round, ac goes a little more for showmanship than technique, and that's why ibuki beats him in the end. tony gogo does a short explanation that says basically this, who is one of the judges and is a founder of the first locking group in the 70s, and also one of michael jackson's choreographers.

if you want to watch something that's a bit more showy and actually uses the idols, this is the first round of the captain's battle between wang yibo (uniq) and jackson wang (got7) from sdc3, where they have like 15min to come up with a short choreo to the same piece of music and then have to battle each other with it. and this is basically the same thing from sdc4, but the captains had to pick a dancer to dance with. the rules were slightly different for this one so the captain could chose to have another dancer sub, which is what han geng did for his second round. if you have 20 min and are curious, this is the full captain's cypher also from sdc4, which is han geng (ex-suju m) v zhang yixing (exo) v wang yibo v henry lau (ex-suju m). they're battling for extra towels (long story, it's the point system, basically) to save dancers that have already been eliminated. each of them pick a style they want to dance, and they have to do four rounds and all dance to each style's music.

basically what i'm using all these examples to explain is that battle dancing is about having a really strong understanding of basic dance skills and being able to do good freestyle. that's the biggest difference between idol dancers and street dancers. and this also extends beyond battles as well; here's another example because i can and because it's extremely funny. this is from the first elimination round in sdc4, where half the dancers were able to pre-choreograph performances and were only able to challenge them in a call out, but the caveat was that they HAD to dance to the other dancer's music without listening to it again. so basically if you wanted to call out someone, you had to listen and memorize while watching their routine, and then freestyle a routine on the spot. which meant that everyone who pre-choreographed routines did it to the most batshit music they could possibly think of, to prevent people from challenging them. xiao ji calls out welllai because he's a dumbass and wants to go to the bathroom, so you can actually see his thinking process in trying to freestyle to this weirdass fuckin beat she used. and he ultimately wins the call out because he shows good ingenuity and character as well as technique and ability. he even says at the end that it was only because of many years of practice that he was able to pull that off.

[fishylife]

Street Dance of China, Season 4, Episode 12, Part 2

- HB played a game where they were testing how well they knew each other. Also the entire look of this (the location, the clothes) gives me boyband vibes lol.

- They are both really good at drawing?!

- Cat alert

- They said they grew close because they were both really into Dragonball

- HB’s performance had two parts. One part was I think supposed to be a throwback to one of their older performances, which just includes a drum beat. The second part was danced to a more pop-ish song. I will say, I didn’t have high expectations for HB. I expected them to just do a typical locking performance, and the fact that they even stepped a little outside of their box already made me like this performance more than I probably would have. At first, I was wondering whether the entire performance would just be to the drum beat, in which case, I would have been disappointed because that’s just...kind of lazy. And yeah, like I said, the fact that they’re dancing to a different style of music is already a surprise for me lol (because from what I’ve seen from the lockers on this show, they are often set in their ways). Though their dance moves themselves were still very typical locking movies, at least they committed to the feel of the music, and moved away from that funk feel and towards this more pop feel.

- Gogo Brothers were bumped off by Hilty & Bosch

- Room tour XD

- He was video calling his mom. He speaks to her in French! Anyway, he was you got me into dancing, and Mom was like “no, you did everything because you love dance!” etc. And she told him she was proud of him :3

- I thought this was a fun performance. I loved the futuristic vibes, but it’s like a 2000s interpretation of the future which is what makes it so fun.

- Han Geng said he wanted to take popping lessons with Poppin’C and he was like but please just don’t charge too much X3

- Sigh, Yixing’s team is catching no breaks today. Qiao Zhi had the lowest score so we are about to see who gets booted.

- The host asked Yixing if he had anything to say since one of Poppin’C or Qiao Zhi were going to get eliminated, and also because Huang Xiao was going up next. And Yixing was like “honestly it’s not that serious I’m really just treating this like a game it’s chill.” This nerd ended by being like “there is no elimination in real life, you just change your stage.”

- Huang Bo was like “Yixing is all grown up!”

- Poppin’C was eliminated :(

- So over the past few weeks I’ve come to learn that Huang Xiao is a little dramatic but like, it’s cute. Here he is screaming because he’s finally going to watch a performance with the music.

- Here he is getting some physiotherapy. His physiotherapist said that he does have a very serious injury in his shoulder :(

- Does he have an interest in music?

- Huang Xiao’s performance was very aesthetically pleasing, which sounds generic, but basically I was very comfortable while watching the entire performance. I think the thing about Huang Xiao being a choreographer is that he has a lot of experience choreographing stuff, so this performance of his doesn’t necessarily need to be a personal one, which is nice. Most of the other performances here are personal statements, but this one was probably comfortable because there wasn’t that personal attachment. I can just view this as a piece of entertainment, rather than trying to discern what this says about Huang Xiao as a person. Huang Xiao said that he just really liked this song, so I think this performance was more about his interpretation of this song, rather than him finding a piece of music to suit a personal statement.

- There were 20 background dancers, who were all from Hello Dance, which is the dance crew that danced with Yixing in his Feitian dance practice video :3 Anyway, I really like the face decorations the ladies have!! (Reminds me of X-Baekhyun’s face chain lol)

- Sigh, as we know, Qiao Zhi was the dancer with the lowest score before

- Okay what the heck? Huang Xiao only got 87 points?? Ok, I know why this performance wasn’t popular, but I don’t think it’s fair :/ Like I said before, this performance wasn’t a personal statement, but just a project, so I think that’s why it wasn’t as popular. In addition, Huang Xiao’s strength is in choreography and not necessarily as a performer, so that may be why people weren’t impressed with him specifically. The spotlight on him wasn’t as strong, so maybe he didn’t leave as strong of an impression. But as a performance, I thought it was great! It had some choreography that was A LOT more creative than some of the other performances we’ve seen so far. Dammit. #justiceforhuangxiao

- You cutie, you deserved better v.v Of course, he was very positive about everything v.v Sigh. Baby.

- Yixing said that Huang Xiao was his choreographer for Feitian X3 So he was like “this is a choreographer I really love.” And as usual, he was like “this is just a game” XD Yixing also calls Huang Xiao “Xiao,” which is interesting.

- Also what a tiny

- Chunlin got a visit from Mom

- Awkward encouraging video from aunts and uncles lol

- Chunlin’s mom visited him while at the studio and all of the other dancers were like “Hello, Auntie~~~” She bought apples for them, it was cute haha.

- Like Huang Xiao’s performance, I thought Li Chunlin’s performance was pretty aesthetically pleasing too, though in a different way. To start things off, there was a very loose TV theme, about Chunlin getting sucked into the TV and joining the TV people in dancing. After he got sucked into the TV, like Huang Xiao’s performance, I felt that his performance was more of an interpretation of the song. What’s also different is that I felt that the performance was more “popular” dance than street dance, so I don’t know how that will fare with the audience voters. In any case, I liked it. The choreography was very fun to watch, and Chunlin got a good part of the spotlight.

- Demonstrating hip rolls to the crowd

- The white shirt he was wearing was Yixing’s gift earlier in the show. Chunlin also said that he was using a skincare product that Henry had gifted him.

- Chunlin was eliminated. He had only four fewer votes than Qiao Zhi.

- Why is Jackson dressed like that OTL

- Ooh, the banners for all of the captains on this show ever. I’m surprised they kept Show Luo’s considering he’s sort of cancelled lol. But also......Zitao’s banner....and Yixing’s banner.....in the same frame (can you tell I’m craving LayTao?).

- Our 8 finalists (technically 9, but HB count as one participant)

- You know, it just occurred to me that Jackson and Henry are in the same show. Can we get some shenanigans from them? We shall see.

- Jackson performed one of his songs

- Followed by a dance performance

- Big hug for the dancers

- Lmao Jackson was breathing so hard his voice broke during his interview. He said he hadn’t been dancing for a while and he’d only prepared this performance for two days, so he was super sore.

- Then we got a performance from Fu Longfei. I didn’t know him, so I looked him up. Apparently he was a Chinese member of a Chinese special unit of the kpop group Nu-est.

- The battle followed a tournament format, though the matchups do get reassigned each round. First matchups were Qiao Zhi vs. Bouboo, Ye Yin vs. Yuu-san of HB, San’er vs. Acky-san, and Yang Kai vs. Ibuki.

- Part way through the first battle, between Qiao Zhi and Bouboo, there were some technical difficulties :x

- There were six rounds for each matchup, and I think because there were so many rounds, they kind of blended together. Also don’t know if it’s just me, but I think because there were so many rounds, each round was shorter, so the amount of time each dancer had to do their part was shorter, so I think that’s why nothing really stood out to me. (Well, that, and the fact that I do prefer routine dances to battle dances if I’m being honest).

- Some Yixing being cute in ads again, to soothe the salt in my soul

- I’m going to be real honest with you. Because I was salty about the performances, I’ve been mostly checked out for the battles and haven’t been paying enough attention to have opinions about them. I’ve just been watching them passively. I was just too affected by some of the performance scoring.

- Anyway, the winner of SDC season 4 was Ye Yin, who was also the winner of season 2.

- I’m so sorry that this episode ended on such a low note. I was just kind of disappointed with a lot of the results in the performances and it made me lose enthusiasm with the battles because the results didn’t make sense to me.

- That being said, the first eleven episodes of this show were still spectacular and extremely fun. I got a lot of joy out of them.

- Would I watch the next season of this show? I’d probably only watch if Yixing was a captain again. I couldn’t tell you why, it’s just what my gut feeling tells me lol.