#but taeyong really is pitch perfect in choreo execution it's really impressive

[sanstropfremir]

have you ever talked about taeyong as a dancer? he's a great performer and nct's center for a reason (even amongst 20+ men, sm chooses him). but he kind of reminds me of kai as a dancer.

i have not talked about taeyong! honestly i'm a little surprised no one has asked me about him but also i don't think there's a lot of nct fans following me so maybe i shouldn't be. don't get me wrong, i absolutely agree, i think taeyong is a great performer and he is the centre of nct for a reason; he's got the it boy cunty face and the stage presence and from what we've seen he's a good leader for wrangling all those fuckin dudes and he's dedicated to learning new skills. he is, however, not a natural dancer. this is not me saying he's a bad dancer either, he's one of the better dancers in nct and he's a perfectly good idol dancer. but he is a good example of someone who is not naturally inclined to dancing in the same way that other dancers i've talked about are: people like hwanwoong, taemin, shownu, ten, and even kai. possibly the reason he reminds you of kai is that they both have the same sort of aborted line finishes that plague kpop dance and especially sm choreographies, and well. taeyong is.......creaky. his body control is very admirable but it swings too far into stiffness, so it comes out making him look like he's got action figure joints. kai shares some of this same stiffness, although for different reasons (i don't think taeyong is as injured as kai is). this isn't always a bad thing, it's useful and necessary in other street dance styles like popping, but what taeyong is lacking a lot of the time is the underlying fluidity of movement that draws everything together. this is a thing i've noticed with a lot of idol dancers, and it comes with the fact that they learn dance by rote memorizing choreography rather than learning basic skills and how their body interprets movement. taeyong looks like he's very intentionally moving specific parts of his body to specific places; his movements are very calculated and geometrical, there isn't any extraneous movement and when i watch him i know his thought process is "my arm needs to be at this specific angle so i have to move my elbow like this and then my forearm like this and then my hand like this," which is all well and good for being very specific for choreography, but makes you look a bit choppy because you aren't following a line through. one's arm isn't a collection of parts you move independantly, it's one long extension where everything is connected. he's a very good example of the adage "everyone can x (draw/sing/dance etc), you just have to practice," because he obviously was not a dancer before doing idol training, and yet he worked extremely hard to learn how, and it paid off for him. here's some examples of what i mean when i say that he's not naturally inclined to movement:

the baby don't stop dance practice, where he's absolutely outclassed by ten in the first fifteen seconds and also the rest of the song

this clip of him and seulgi dancing to make a wish; this one is more recent and it's a very good showing of how taeyong is executing the choreography perfectly, but seulgi is embodying the choreography

and the comparision between this fancam of kick it and hwanwoong's cover. obvs these are a bit different because one is a short cover and one is just taeyong's part of the full song. i wish they had just flat filmed hwanwoong but you can still see how hwanwoong lives in the choreo with his whole body, whereas taeyong always kind of looks a little detached from the experience, if you understand what i mean.

again, this is not me saying taeyong is a bad dancer. i just don't think taeyong is ever going to be able to not look like he's trying.