On ‘Somebody,’ contestants prove dance is a love language
As important as the elegant and powerful movements of a dancer are to putting on a good performance, delivering the right emotions are just as, if not more, crucial to touching people’s hearts. And for their newest show, cable channel Mnet focuses on just that: the emotions between the moves.
“Somebody” aired its first episode on Friday evening, introducing 10 participants who spent a month together while undertaking challenges using their different dancing skills. A variety show featuring dancers may not be new, but what makes this show unique is that it has dancers competing not for the title of best dancer, but for love.
The show was directed by producer Choi Jung-nam who previously directed “Dancing9,” a dance competition show in 2015. She saw that people had developed very intimate emotions towards each other while they were preparing for a couple’s dance, which served as the inspiration for “Somebody.”
“With other dance competition shows, we didn’t have room to shed light on the relationships that people develop between themselves,” said Choi to local press on Thursday. “So with this show, we took the idea of love as the main theme. Love is the most common emotion that people feel, and we thought that it would be easy for viewers to identify with the situation.”
While the dancers - five female and five male - spent a month living together, they were challenged with finding someone that feels the same way they do and eventually shoot a music video together. The list of participants include young dancers, some who are very well known already to the public: 2017 Miss Korea Seo Jae-won, hip-hop dancer Lee Su-jeong, ballerina Lee Joo-ri, street dancer Jung Yeon-soo, contemporary dancer Maeng I-seul, ballerino Na Dae-han, idol Lee Eui-jin, acrobat dancer Oh Hong-hak, musical actor Han Sun-chun and B-boy dancer Kim Seunghyuk.
“This is a show where love meets music and dance,” said Shin Jung-soo, director of Mnet. “We’ve had dating programs and dance programs, but I think this is a step forward for us to combine them together and make something new out of it.”
The show will air every Friday night at 11 p.m.
BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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