#lead dancer

The sun is slowly rising.

Let its light give you strength.

Let yourself be protected by the graceful Archer🏹 —

Okay okay okay yes I used a video where you can't actually see anything for a bit. It's harder than you think to find Taehyung focus dance cams okay, at least the ones I like. So cool out until about :22 when our birthday boy gets going and then sit back and enjoy the nicely nasty groove of one Kim Taehyung, Lead Dancer. I rank him fourth in BTS - and that means he's head and shoulders above most dancers in the pop industry. Man can move. I really like Tae's style in Dynamite. I like it in Black Swan. I like it in ON and Mic Drop. But it took me awhile to pay attention to Taehyung as a dancer. It wasn't until after Singularity dropped and he was promoted into the dance line proper that I really started clocking him in performances and rehearsals. Great things about Tae's dancing: his shoulders, his hips, his knees, his smirk. Taehyung has a nicely flexible spine that I know he's worked on because I've seen the progression over time with it. There's a natural grace and easy fluidity to his motion, but he also has developed a nice sharp pop to the ends of his steps and movements that really adds to his work. But Tae's secret weapon is his box line: his shoulders and their relation to his hips. Part of this is his body proportions which: ugh. Gorgeous, amirite. The man is beautifully put together. But he works his shoulders and hips as a unit and that is a technically proficient way to move. His shoulder autonomy and articulation is one of the highlights of his dancing and it shows up nicely in the video above.

Go ahead and just watch that man gesture all over the place without needing to extend to his fingertips. I mean he CAN extend and finish the moves, and he does when he wants to, and it looks awesome, but the thing is, with those shoulders? He can get it done with the barest gesture of his wrists. As a result of his shoulder articulation and lower back flexibility, he can move his hips and down into his knees and he looks great when he does. His height helps him here because it looks like he's actually getting down farther than he is, vs. Jimin who has to bend a lot more to get the same look. Tae is long-limbed and it really works for him in terms of the appearance of the groove. Y'all I hesitate to even say this because I just got a crapton of anon hate for my Jimin pulls up in his torso post. But Taehyung doesn't always bother to finish his moves. He's a lot better about it than he used to be, especially in performance. In fact sometimes his lines are fluid enough that he looks every bit as good as, say, Jungkook.

But Taehyung doesn't come with same tech specs as a Hobi or a Jimin - not even close - and that's okay. He is pretty. God only made the one Park Jimin and Tae doesn't need to fit that mold. He dances like a man who enjoys dancing but who is not betting his life savings on whether he can do four pirouettes in a row or jump above shoulder height- that is not his jam and it doesn't need to be. He can make you beg just as easily from the middle of the pack, thanks, and without all that effort. I ain't mad at a man who's too cool for school as long as he can show out when he needs to.