Seventeen Good to Me - Chorus Dance Analysis
Hi this is part three of my posts analyzing the choreographies of the You Make My Dawn era! Yes its been six months since the last post, what about it! To be fully honest Iāve been putting this post off cause thereās just...so much to talk about with this one itās daunting. Good to me is truly one of my favorite svt choreos.
First post (x) Second post (x)
Thereās so much to talk about in this dance that we could be here all day, so as with the other posts Iām just going to talk about the choruses, and Iām going to focus on two aspects of them
Levels and Variation. I talk about variation, or how much the choreography during the repetitive parts of the song (pre chorus and chorus, and possibly verses) varies throughout the whole dance, in almost all my dance posts because its a huge part of what makes a kpop dance interesting or not. And I want to talk about levels, or how far from or close to the ground different members are at different points in the dance, this time because especially in a group as big as svt, it practically allows them to create formations in three dimensions, allowing for even more possibility of variation throughout the dance.
This first prechorus-chorus-postchorus is the base from which the following choruses will vary. If you look, you can see they are already making some cool choices with levels here. In the prechorus, when they all fall outwards, the people in the back are standing all the way up while the people in front go down to the ground. If you imagine this formation as a circle around the vocalist, adding these levels is like tilting the circle on a diagonal, which gives it depth and texture, along with allowing you to fully see all of the people. I also just want to note that I really like the movement in the chorus and postchorus, especially how well it matches with the music.Ā Iāve been lucky enough to see this song live, and I think its just amazing how foreceful the music in the chorus feels, the heavy bass and powerful vocals just bowl you over, so therefore the movement does too: itās hard-hitting, fast, uses all the different parts of their bodies and ranges of movement, and just feels like theyāre charging down the stage at you. Then the music settles into this more laidback repetitive section: good to me, good to me, ayayaya, and the movement follows suit. They hold their wrists together and just sort of lazily sway back and forth, but they donāt let it get boring because they keep changing the formation and, again, the levels. At the very end of this section, all of the boys kneel to ground except chan, allowing him to sing the last line of the post-chorus. This change of levels almost signals that weāre moving from a group-oriented dance section (the chorus) back to a section where the focus will be more on individual vocalists (the verse).
AH YEAH BUDDY WE GET TO TALK ABOUT VARIATION NOW!!!
This is one of my favorite instances of variation in an svt dance!! Itās simple but so effective. In the first prechorus the boys are in a circle around the vocalist and they push their chests to the outside, away from him, and then in the second prechorus they stand in the same circle and do the same movement, but this time in towards the middle of the circle!! Itās such a nice way of using the same movement quality and formation but changing it just enough that it catches your eye and keeps the dance interesting. And then itās immediately followed by a brilliant little moment of levels, where by quickly going from crouching to standing to crouching again, the group makes dk magically turn into mingyu. Levels ba-by! This is a nice segue into the second chorus, which I love love love love love because it simultaneously makes great use of variation AND levels. What is the variation you ask? Well its simple: the choreo is just completely different from the first chorus! Kpop dances in which two of the choruses (or gasp! all three) have different choreography make me so happy for two reasons: one, it shows there was passion and care put into this dance because the choreographer didnāt just make one chorus and then hit copy paste, and two, because it allows you to experience the music of the chorus in a different way! If the audio in the choruses remains the same but the visual stimuli you get while hearing it changes, it creates a new experience for the viewer and I just think thatās so cool. BUT they werenāt just satisfied by being creative with the variation, they also had to put some cool levels into this chorus! In a stroke of brilliance they use levels as the way they transition from one vocalist to the next. Dk, jun, and josh sing the three lines in this chorus, and they are standing one in front of the other in that order, so that when dk finishes his line, he and the boys next to him just get down and keep doing the choreo ON THEIR FRICKIN KNEES so that you can see jun as heās singing. How damn creative is that?? And then when jun finishes his line, he in turn bends down so you can see josh, so by the end of the chorus you have this incredible terraced garden of sebongs (lol) and it just makes such a cool image. I really wish I was done talking about this section cause this post is turning into a monster, but unfortunately they keep making cool choices in the postchorus. They really couldāve kept the wrist-touching good to me good to me (ayaya) part the same, but here they use the same cool device. About half the boys do the movements as the others walk around behind them (which is nice in itself, it switches up the formation from how it was in the chorus), and then you guessed it they get down on their knees so you can see the boys behind them for the next good to me good to me. This dance is practically a masterclass in how to use levels in your choreography jfc.
Shout out to them hitting the woah before it was cool in the seconds before this video starts. anyway.
We did it guys we made it to the last chorus and postchorus! In this one they repeat the choreo from the first chorus, and let me tell you why thatās a good choice this time around. Variation is great if you donāt want your dance to be just repetitive and boring, but sometimes if you have too much of it you go to the other extreme and your dance has no structure. You want to have some kind of repeated motif, section, or step in the dance to create a through line for the audience to recognize and connect with. The best dances strike a perfect balance of repetition and variation, so its nice to see these familiar steps again in the last chorus after so much crazy variation. Also the movement is so dang good i just donāt mind seeing it again. And then we get to the last postchorus, and I just love that the movements have stayed the same in this section, but the way its formatted and leveled has been different all three times! So exciting and interesting to watch. They make nice use of their levels again with half the boys on their knees in front and half standing up in the back, yet again giving us a formation with depth and texture. And then to finish the dance we get this amazing moment that tickles me pink every time, where all the boys are on their knees except Vernon and he just SLAMS his hands down on the beat, making it look like heās the one that made everyone else bend over at the same time. Listen....I kept this analysis structural and theoretical and restrained myself from diving into how I think this whole dance is about power play and kinky stuff but broooo its too good in that moment not to mention. There is all this changing of levels in this dance, all this switching between whoās higher up and who is below them, but in this moment at the end only one person stands tall and itās clear heās in charge. What a powerful ending.
Shhh iām ignoring boo and dk in that moment they gotta stand so they can do pretty adlibs
Thank you for reading! Sorry itās so long!! Thank you as always to @rockmymansaeā for editing the video clips <3












