"A2O LITE's Xili Could Barely Move, but She Stayed": J Black Reveals Stories of 'NEON'

"Xili has a serious grit," dancer J Black said. "I couldn't believe she was a middle schooler. She could barely move, but she still insisted on watching us practice. She sat there holding her stomach, watching us."

J Black choreographed the intro for "NEON," the debut song by rookie girl group A2O LITE. He was talking about member Xili's mental strength.

J Black and fellow dancer Choi In-young (Sseji) spoke with K-POPIT on Oct. 27 at Cream Dance, a dance academy in Bundang district, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. They talked about the behind-the-scenes processd of making the group's choreography. Dancer Lee Dong-gyu (T-100), who also co-created the "NEON" choreography, could not join the interview.

The song has gained traction quickly. A2O LITE debuted on Oct. 13. Just 29 hours later, "NEON" reached No. 1 on Melon's Top 100 chart, the main chart of the South Korean streaming platform Melon. On the latest Billboard charts, released on Oct. 27 for the chart week dated Oct. 31, the song ranked No. 8 on the Global 200 and No. 3 on the Global Excl. U.S.

J Black said he never saw Xili lose focus. "Kids that age usually goof around and joke," he said. "But I never once saw her slack off."

He recalled a time when she got so sick that she had to rush to the hospital the day before a practice session.

"Even at a glance, she looked really sick, but she pretended she wasn't," he said. "She kept saying she was fine. We told her, 'Don't push yourself,' and 'You can only dance when you're not hurting.' She stayed anyway, until the very end. I was surprised that someone so young could be that mature."

Choi also praised Xili's natural instincts for dance.

"At first, hip-hop wasn't a genre she knew well, so she struggled," Choi said. "But she got noticeably better over time. When she watched us teachers dance, she'd say, 'That looks hard. That's amazing.' Being able to see how hard a move is already means you have a feel for it. Whenever we gave her something to practice, she came back fully prepared. Every single time. Teaching her was a lot of fun."

Fellow member Aijing took a different approach. "Aijing handled hip-hop well from the start," Choi said. "She has an innocence that fits her age. That's her charm."

"When she's not dancing, she complains, 'I'm tired. Do we have to do the whole thing from the top?'" Choi said. "But once the music comes on, she dances really well. Then when the music stops, she pulls a stag beetle toy out of her bag, winds it up and looks so happy."

Asked how much training the two members received, Choi said they had six sessions of 90 minutes each.

"Even if you add the extra training, the total was probably about 13 to 14 hours," J Black said. "What matters isn't the time we spent teaching. It's the time the members practiced on their own. We showed them what to focus on and asked the company's trainers to keep working on it with them. Every time we came back, they had really practiced. Xili especially came in well prepared."

J Black admitted he had low expectations when the offer to work with A2O LITE first came in.

"I thought idol choreography was a separate world that had nothing to do with me," he said. "I'd send in draft routines, but they never got picked. That kept happening, so honestly, I didn't expect anything this time either. But when I went to the meeting, they showed me my freestyle videos and said they wanted 'J Black's style.' I was really surprised."

At the time, he was dealing with a serious back injury and could barely walk.

"I told the A2O team that I couldn't film the draft videos myself and might not be able to do the training," he said. "They still said it was OK. I almost felt sorry. So I asked Lee Dong-gyu and Choi In-young, who have learned my dancing for a long time, for help. I'd describe a feeling or show a move quickly, and the two of them brought it to life. Without them, this choreography would never have come out."

One moment that got a lot of attention was Aijing's spin in the song's intro.

"One of my signature moves is a spin where I turn my head and bend my left leg," J Black said. "Something with a similar feel was the starting point. In that part, I wanted to keep it feeling improvised, but I still had to give her a basic structure."

He credited Lee Soo-man with refining the choreography.

"This choreography came together because Lee Soo-man fine-tuned the details," he said. "I only thought about how to spin technically. But he seemed to think about how it should look on camera to grab people's attention. It's a shame I didn't get to meet him in person, but it was really impressive that he got involved down to the smallest details of the moves."

Choi agreed. "As the head of the company, he could have just supported the artists' work," Choi said. "It was really amazing to see him look over the moves himself."