#balanchine ballets r so batshit insane like fr. not to go off on a ballet tangent

[sanstropfremir]

episode nine babes!!! it's the final stretch!!

this episode felt much more like the final round before the finale!! as always brave girls and hyolyn absolutely delivered on the drama and the panache! i had a lot of fun watching these stages, but i'm not gonna ramble on too much in the intro since this review is already a day late lmao.

hyolyn

costume

perfect. 10/10. LOVE the croptop based off a lifejacket, very inspired. plus the lil accessory pouches on her belt!! this is a really good example of how to theatricalize a uniform with a lot of flair, but still keep enough of the recognizable elements.

it's a very interesting choice that they went for bike shorts across the board than something skimpier (like the original styling), which would have been the easier choice to portray summer beach vibes. i don't think it was a bad choice, in fact i think it was a more challenging and creative one! it was the more conceptually difficult option and that's an uncommon avenue for kpop.

lighting

i feel like they blew the white balance out a bit too far on the cameras, which didn't help with all that bright bright red and magenta. those are very hot colours and there are a few moments were stuff blends together. human eyesight is the worst at identifying shades of red so it's especially a problem when it's in both costume and lights, but it wasn't egregious enough to really detract from the performance for me.

related: some of the more eyesearing red moments and the very strict red/blue colour palette paid off for the uv light dance break. and with the hats in the audience!!!

sound

literally no complaints. she sounded great, the arrangement of see sea was perfect and it was cute as hell that she substituted the 'babe' with 'bae'. slam dunk.

staging

looooooooooooooove the structure of this stage and the literal integration of the 'fan' aspect!!!!!! the steadicam intro with the fan on the subway car in the secondary area was the perfect framing device for the beach/lifeguard concept! also not gonna lie i got faked out by that backup dancer on the subwar car who had a very similar haircut to hyolyn, i thought she was gonna be on the subway car and do some kind of costume change lmao. i'm not sure if it was intended as a misdirect but it got me

i like that hyolyn travelled over to the subway car and it wasn't just used the one time, it kept her from being confined to the main stage, and it was a fun choreographic element to use

it's more of a general note but i liked that the three groups that went today had more significant set than we've previously seen. it made all the stages feel more worthy of being for the penultimate round and overall they were all fun. i loved hyolyn's lil lifeguard shack, it looked real sharp and added a set of levels that gave more oppurtunity to direct blocking. also the cannon on the top was a cute detail.

like with the touch my body stage, the projections are doing a lot of work with the limited set elements to build a very convincing beach, that then also transitioned very seamlessly into the cityscape for the fakeout/reveal at the end. the chainlink fence was a particularly inspired dual element choice! once again, a lot of careful and smart planning on the part of hyolyn and her performance director.

brave girls

costume

unironically i love these. they're a little bit ugly and a little bit ballet based but they so ridiculous and surreal that i do not even care. i love ugly. i really really appreciate that they were intending to go for a metaphor and they were extremely literal about it. they could have just sprung for a big flower on each of them as their spring has finally come but instead they opted for all flowers all the time and i love that. this is a go big or go home type of show and even though brave girls had a stellar track record so far, this costuming feels like both a natural evolution and needed exaggeration.

also the dresses pair so well with the all white of the dancers. i'm not even going to complain about how high the exposure is because they're meant to be snow.

lighting

speaking of snow, GOD the projection work here is SO fucking good!!!!!. they fully used the capacity of the screens to establish the boundaries of the space with the pillars and windows and drapery, and then also set the videos+'cinematic' elements within that established space! having that permanent setting kept the scale of the space feeling very grounded, and it made the widening of the 'hall' when spring came so much more visually impactful! you could actually feel how the change in perspective of the modeled space from a flat perspective to a rounded one opened everything up, even though there's basically no actual set

also i love love love a pastel sunset/sunrise palette like this. it's one of my favourites and they use it so well in the 'sky' and then carrying that throughline out into the stage lighting too

sound

i think this is the rearrangement of theirs that i like the least of all the ones we've heard so far, but it's still good. the encorporation of strings does a bunch of the heavy lifting in terms of tying all the numerous visual elements together. like strings (generally) imply classical music (they did actually use a classical piece also), which links the ballerina figure. classical music also links to the vaguely romantic type architecture of the 'building', which links it to a ballroom, which further links it to ballet, but also links it to the cinderella style slippers. 'classical' music also tenuously links the silent film type cinematic elements (even though silent film soundtracks were usually done on piano but i did say this was a tenuous link. i think the general 'old timey'-ness covers this one)

staging

speaking on how all the references in this stage are linked together, here's a continuation: there are several very famous classical pieces based around the seasons, and there are ballets of some of them. classical ballets often also have themes of transformation in them (giselle, swan lake). cinderella is also a story of transformation. the changing of seasons is always a transformation but winter into spring is associated with rebirth and success after a period of darkness and hardship. the classical piece that they remixed in is tchaikovsky's waltz of the flowers (duh) from the nutcracker (another ballet about transformation!!!) i feel like i need to make a diagram to map all the connections of the references out so that y'all can properly see how much thought was put into this. i'm literally so impressed.

it's so easy be haphazard with these types of stages because a lot of designers don't understand that spectacle requires as much care as any other type of stage or performance type. when you put the effort in to synthesis your ideas you can come up with something so beautiful and creative and it shows in the way that people respond to it! the improvement trajectory from the aimless concept of their first stage to this is so impressive, they and their creative team have clearly learned a lot and it's paid off for them.

loona

costume

i don't.........know how i feel about these? i don't think i like them because i don't think they make sense. while i appreciate that there was finally an effort to go a bit more surreal with it, why are they just plain ol' beige. you do a song literally called butterfly and you have all the costumes in unpatterned beige, a colour butterflies are famously very not. this was a perfect opportunity for bright jeweltones or interesting patterning or just some of those really big chiffon scarves with butterfly wings silkscreened onto them. you know, the ones they sell at the botanical/butterfly garden gift shops.

tbh my main issue is that the costumes are not saying anything. i don't know what the theme of this stage is. i've said it numerous times at this point but the fastest way to convey concept is through costuming and i just do not know what they're trying to do. sometimes that's not an issue and styling doesn't always have to be super prescriptive, but imo this stage is screaming for some proper visual direction and having more clarity in the member's costumes would have fixed that lickety split.

no notes on the backup dancers tho, those are perfect chef's kiss MWAH

lighting

say it with me babes: WE! LOVE! PROPERLY! UTILIZED! PRACTICALS!!!!!!!! yes turn off those overheads we want it DARK for those leds baby!!!!!!! it also helps that they used blue/cool toned leds, because it makes them cut through the warm/amber wash that they're using as the general stage light.

other than the excellent practical use there really isn't anything else special or noteworthy happening with the lights. the projections are very benign and inoffensive. i do like that that they did a could of nice cues with those floor cannons, it made some nice underlighting in a could of the darker sections

sound

i'm not familiar with loona's music so i have to assume there was some importance to choosing this song, but i really think they should have done some more arranging to it to make the song fit this type of spectacle performance more. it was very sedate and also it felt like it wasn't mixed properly? like the levels were alllll over the place: the mics were way too hot and the backing track was way too quiet and also very flat? like it was compressed down to a single channel and not stereo optimized. which could have just been a volume issue and it might have been fine in the space, we have no way of knowing since it's a recording, but there was the same problem in the fullcam, which is just the raw space audio.

staging

loona has the contact of a very good set designer bc the detailing on that platform and those stargate ass rings is really fucking good. like i was SHOCKED at how nice that platform looks. i'm also very glad that they went for a level in the back, it uses up some of that upstage space (this stage is weirdly kinda square) and forces a lot of the main action to take place closer to the audience. i've noticed it in a couple of stages over the course of the show but sometimes people and choreo has been getting lost in the upstage ether and it's much better for this type of performance to bring it downstage. and levels are always a bonus.

i liked the big spiderwebs! great way to shorthand conflict visually and it was a nice cutaway from main stage.

am i just tired or did this seem very similar to their choreo from their intro stage? i might just be watching too many too large groups doing big choreos.

---

since i'm a day late on this and twitter was unhelpful i'm not entirely sure what the outcome of the episode was? my personal rankings were:

hyolyn

brave girls

loona

wjsn

kep1er

viviz

and it looks like the round three rankings were:

brave girls

wjsn

loona

hyolyn

kep1er

viviz

which i will agree with on first and last but NONE of what's going on in the middle HOW could you rank hyolyn so low!!! i also think this means that no one is getting eliminated? since i don't think anyone ranked last twice? which, hooray!! i think that was a dumb rule anyways and there's only six groups, just let them all perform there's no need for these fake stakes. anyways we love brave girls getting full points like they DESERVE. and now it's just the finale left!!!!