“Street Dance Girls Fighter” Jo Nain Struggled To Choreograph NMIXX’s “Tank”—Here’s Why
NMIXX‘s B-side track “Tank” has an accompanying choreography that is anything but simple! Unlike many K-Pop dances, it makes heavy use of the legs and hips. It’s a unique choreography that the girls pull off well.
The choreography was made by none other than Jo Nain, the young dancer from the hit reality show Street Dance Girls Fighter!
In an interview with Weverse Magazine, Nain was asked if she experienced any difficulties in the process of creating the dance.
NMIXX’s choreography for ‘TANK,’ which you worked on before SDGF, has now been made public, and it was your first K-pop choreography proposal. Did you have any difficulties with it?
— Weverse Magazine
She revealed that she didn’t know what to do after hearing the song for the first time. The unique structure of the song made everything more difficult. Moreover, there was added pressure after she was asked to make a dance that would stop people in their tracks.
My mind was actually all over the place for the first week after I heard that song. (laughs) The structure made it really hard to make choreography for. The song is unique and when I met their people they asked me to make choreography that would cause people to stop and wonder what they were looking at.
— Jo Nain
She was careful to come up with a style that would suit the members and meet the company’s expectations. Because she had never personally met NMIXX, she had to guess their strengths and predict what they dance like.
Seeing as they were just debuting, I didn’t know each member’s dance style, so any choreography I made would become part of their style, so I was really careful as to how I would go about it. I tried to reflect the label’s requests as much as possible and looked at each member’s photo and thought, ‘Maybe they would be good at something like this?‘ (laughs) I imagined things that way while mapping out my ideas.
— Jo Nain
Finally, she recalled spending tireless nights she spent finishing the choreography. It was the chorus that she struggled with the most, even three days before the deadline! It was only after she danced freestyle with a friend that an idea popped up, and the rest is history.
Even though I was up almost every night making the choreography, I couldn’t nail down the choreography for the chorus even with three days left before the deadline. I kept agonizing over it and finally thought I should just make it up while goofing around with my friend. I thought I had to do that to break out of my normal style.
I was dancing with my friend and all of a sudden I came up with a move where you pop your hips side to side. (laughs) I made it by alternatively rotating my hips left and right exactly in time with the rhythm. The result was a really unique dance, and I was really glad they did such a good job with it.
— Jo Nain
In the same interview, Nain was asked about how she reacted when BTS‘s Jungkook covered one of her choreographies. Check out her answer here:
