Me? Check. Mandu? Check. Favorite Kpop Artists? Check!

I have not seen this good a girl dancer for quite some time now. At least not since GLAM’s Zinni or 2NE1’s Minzy. And especially not since Kahi or BoA.

After happening to somehow come across this video of YG Entertainment’s new girl group in the making — debut date unknown (and very unlikely that it’ll be anytime soon) — that is better known as Pink Punk, I’m getting psyched and hyped for what YG has in store for us. If they have THIS trainee (featured in the video), I can only imagine what other trainees they have.

Yet after watching this clip, it made me think “Hmmm…if a trainee is this good before, is it possible that they actually somehow lose skills when they debut?” 

It’s quite possible, I believe. If you think about it, when you’re a trainee all you do is train. You haven’t debuted yet, right? So obviously you aren’t promoting any songs, you aren’t constantly traveling from one venue to the next for radio talk shows and interviews, and you definitely aren’t performing live on broadcast on the daily. Simply put, you have time; and all that time is probably spent towards practicing, learning dance routines, stretching vocal ranges, and working on your style. This means that you try, see, and do a million different things, all in simple hopes of figuring out just exactly what it is you’re going to be defined as when you go public, AKA debut.

So when you actually debut, you have it figured out (or at least, 90% figured out). The tension and anxiety during the trainee days is what pushed you to be diligent, diverse, and dynamic. But now that you’ve debuted, maybe some of that “push” has evolved into “peace”; and maybe now you start to ease up.

True, debuting means that you definitely grow wiser as you gain first-hand experience of being a pro, but the wisdom of being an idol lies on the “extreme-other-end” of the spectrum from the wisdom you gain while training (all that variety of training…down the drain now T^T)

But hold up don’t get your panties in a bunch! I was just stating my mind here, merely because when I think of the K-pop stars of now, I’ll admit that the fire and drive of 1st gen/2nd gen K-pop idols aren’t as intense as those of newly debuted rookie groups. My thought? Rookie groups are still fresh off the pan – they still have that same drive they had when they were pre-debut and all they could think about was just to debut. But through time 2PM, Big Bang, 2NE1, SNSD, Suju, SHINee, etc. etc. etc. have settled into their concepts, and are owning it. They don’t have the same feeling as, let’s say, they did back in 2006/07/08/09…but they definitely have got their own style down pat by now. Current groups that are reaching that level of sophistication coupled with avant garde? Infinite, Miss A, CN Blue, B2ST, and T-ara, just to name a few. Now compare them to After School. After School will most likely never reach that same level, and that’s probably because they’re always constantly switching gears — changing members = changing concepts. But it still works for them. Change is their only constant. And that’s their style, I guess: change.

Wow okay all of this mind-jargon just from a short dance clip. I’M LOSING IT.

So y’all. Mind leaving a comment about how you feel on this topic? It’ll be cool to know what you think!

Until next time,

– Jomarie