J Black Says "Nobody Has Nailed A2O LITE's 'NEON' Challenge"

"People say there's a shoulder-shaking move at the start of 'NEON,' but it's not actually a shake," J Black said. "You ride the bounce and twist your shoulders side to side and up and down. It just ends up looking like a shake once the speed picks up."

He laughed. "I looked at the challenges other artists did, and nobody was doing it right."

The dancer helped create the choreography for "NEON," the debut song from the group A2O LITE. He said the opening section he choreographed is so difficult that even adult artists have trouble pulling it off.

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

J Black recalled the first time he heard the song.

"Honestly, I was thrown," he said. "I'm a hip-hop dancer, but the song wasn't at a hip-hop tempo. It was much faster."

His own freestyle video had been shared with a request: "We want this kind of feel." The challenge was adapting that style to the track.

"To fit those moves to 'NEON,' I had to dance at almost double speed," he said. "I thought a lot about whether I could really incorporate my dance into this music."

The shoulders are not the only tricky part. He also highlighted the fast footwork that leads into the move.

"Those quick steps right before the shoulder move are supposed to be done with isolations while you lower your body," he said. "But in the challenges, everyone does them differently. It's a lot harder technically than it looks."

Dance challenges, in which fans and artists recreate a song's signature moves in short videos, have become a big part of how K-POP songs spread. J Black said he enjoyed seeing so many people take on "NEON" anyway.

"Even though it's hard, I was happy that so many people did the challenge in their own ways," he said. "Of the videos I saw, two TWS members, Jihoon and Kyungmin, came closest to the original choreography."

The pair moved fast. "They posted their challenge within a day or two of the song coming out, and that really surprised me," he said with a laugh. "I wondered, 'Was our choreography easy?' But they were just especially good."

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

J Black said he was impressed by how the full routine came together. Three choreographers worked on it, each with a different style.

"The section I made and the sections by the other choreographers had different styles, so they were easy to tell apart," he said. "Someone connected the three choreographers' three colors into one piece really well. I'm really curious who picked each part and put them together."

He added, "If Lee Soo-man did that work, I think that shows amazing instincts."

Choi In-young agreed.

"Each part flows into the next so naturally that it feels like one piece," she said. "The structure was so good that it's hard to pick just one part I liked best."