I kind of feel like the IDOL performance at MMA did this really cool thing of framing BTS (and by extension, kpop as a whole) explicitly within the context of Korea’s cultural history of performance art?
Like the three drums dance, fan dancing, mask dancing, pungmul, and kpop, they’re all performance mediums that involve the integration of a lot of different elements. As Suga said: kpop isn’t really a genre of music, it’s the whole package of the music and the clothes and the makeup and the choreography. And that’s true of all of the traditional dances they pulled from in this intro.
Seeing kpop framed as not a new thing, but really as a continuation of this cultural heritage of performance art is really cool.
[fancams: J-Hope, Jimin, Jungkook]