A2O LITE's NEON Choreographer Says Korea Is a Top-3 Street Dance Nation

"Siri's drive is unreal. I couldn't believe she was a middle schooler," says dancer J Black, who created the opening choreography for A2O LITE's debut song "NEON." He recalls the member sitting through practice the day after a rushed hospital visit, clutching her stomach, insisting she was fine.

J Black spoke on the 27th at Cream Dance Academy in Bundang, Seongnam, alongside dancer Choi In-young (Sseji). Co-choreographer Lee Dong-gyu (T-100) could not attend and answered questions in writing.

Siri's practice habits and Aijing's charm

J Black says he never saw Siri slip at an age when most kids are goofing around. "She looked really sick, but she pretended she wasn't," he says. Even when told dance should only be done when it doesn't hurt, she stayed to the end.

Choi In-young praised her instincts. Siri found hip-hop unfamiliar at first, Choi says, but improved visibly, and noticing how difficult the teachers' moves were already showed good sense. She arrived thoroughly prepared every time.

Aijing, by Choi's description, took to hip-hop right away, with a purity suited to her age. She may whine about starting from the top between songs, but once music plays she dances very well. When it stops, she pulls a wind-up stag beetle toy from her bag and happily winds it.

The two members trained for six 90-minute sessions. J Black estimates 13 to 14 hours in total with extras, and stresses that what mattered was the members' own practice, reinforced by company trainers.

Making NEON while injured

J Black says he had assumed idol choreography was a separate world from his. His proposals had never been chosen, so he expected little this time. Then the team showed him his own freestyle video and said they wanted his style.

A severe back injury left him barely able to walk, so he warned the company he might not film demos or run training. They said that was fine. He asked Lee and Choi, who have studied his dance for years, to embody his instructions. "Without them, this choreography would never have come out," he says.

Of Aijing's much-discussed spin in the intro, he says it began from one of his signatures: turning the head while bending the left leg. The section needed to feel improvised yet have a basic structure. He credits Lee Soo-man with finishing the details, saying that while he thought about technique, Lee seemed to consider how a move captures viewers on camera. Choi added that it was striking to see a company head so involved in individual moves.

Korea's street dance standing

J Black believes Korean street dance ranks among the world's top three. Korean dancers have won world battles in hip-hop, popping and waacking, holding their own against China, the US and Russia. Abroad, he says, Korea is known as a dance powerhouse, but at home few realize it. He hopes people worldwide will one day feel they must come to Korea to learn dance.

He adds that people in China know his name, and that Aijing recognized him from his international battle record.

Choi recalls that her teacher T-100 showed her J Black's videos, which broke what she thought she knew. Lee says he had tried many instructors before J Black, and from the first class felt he had found a thread. Choi stuck with the difficult lessons for nine months before realizing it was strange to be ashamed of not being good at something she came to learn.

The night that shaped his style

Asked when he first broke his own mold, J Black points to age 28. He had entered hundreds of contests and never passed the preliminaries, with 30,000 won in his account while friends settled into careers. Anger built up. At one contest he flailed his arms, got threateningly close to the judges and made tearing, hitting, smashing motions, and finished runner-up.

He concluded sincerity moves people. He distilled that night's movements into what became his style. Audiences call it powerful, he says, but it is steeped in violence: swung fists, sharply bent necks and spines, almost self-harming. In his forties he has learned to listen, and now asks Lee and Choi for advice. He once quit dancing out of exhaustion, and says not dancing made him want it again. Now he is grateful even for the stress.

A2O LITE debuted on the 13th and hit #1 on Melon's TOP 100 within 29 hours. On the Billboard chart dated October 31, "NEON" ranked #8 on the Global 200 and #3 on Global Excl. U.S.