NewJeans’s performance directors angrily revealed their position about ILLIT copying NewJeans’s choreographies
ADOR’s performance director Kim Eun-joo, who worked on the choreographies of “Attention” and “Hype Boy”, posted on her SNS account on May 13th, saying “Huh? Is this real? Even the choreography for a CF? I’ve been holding myself back for a long time. It isn’t right to call this a coincidence, is it?”.
She continued, “Yes, there can be similarities”, adding “However, if you use the choreography as a reference, you should at least modify it a little bit. This is like copy and paste”.
Black Q (real name Kim Young-hoo), ADOR’s performance director and the choreographer of “Cookie”, “OMG” and “Super Shy”, also shared, “Eh? I’ve been holding back my suspicions, but I didn’t know they would even copy the CF choreography”, adding “The process that someone went through to show up in this way must have never been easy”.
The performance director did not clearly point out the subject they were talking about but considering the mention of “CF choreography”, people believe that he was targeting ILLIT, the girl group that has been controversial for copying NewJeans’s choreographies.
In particular, Black Q has been in charge of most of NewJeans’s choreographies and was even nicknamed “NewJeans’s father”. He did not say anything about ILLIT’s plagiarism controversy but his post this time made netizens wonder how severe the issue is.
The two choreographers made their posts after someone claimed that the choreography of ILLIT’s follow-up song “Lucky Girl Syndrome” was similar to NewJeans’s dance in McDonald’s CF video.
Prior to this, ILLIT has been accused of plagiarizing NewJeans several times. The choreography of ILLIT’s debut song “Magnetic”, in which the members raised one arm and spinned the other arm, was said to be the same as NewJeans’s dance for their hit song “Ditto”, which was released one year and three months earlier.
The iconic choreography of “Attention”, which was the part when the members grab the head with both arms then bend down and go up again while sweeping off their straight hair, also appeared in the performance of ILLIT’s “Magnetic”. In addition, ILLIT also copied a few movements from the choreography of NewJeans’s “OMG”.
ILLIT has consistently faced criticism because of their similarities with NewJeans ever since the group released their debut teasers. As such, the majority of netizens raised their voices supporting NewJeans’s choreographers, saying “Copying the CF choreography. Isn’t it too much?”, “This is the first time I’ve seen someone copy the killing part like that”, “The choreographies realized it right away when they see the choreographies”, etc
On May 14, a topic titled “A foreign choreographer called out ILLIT’s choreography on Instagram 3 months ago”.
Particular, the topic included a post from choreographer Kelly Sweeney, who posted a comparison between her own choreography and ILLIT’s dancing in one video, along with the caption, “As an artist and choreographer, someone who devotes their life to creating original moves and does this as a living, it’s very frustrating to see people take your steps without any credit. As flattered as I am that their choreographer liked it so much as to learn it, change the song, and do it for their video, it’s NEVER okay to plagiarize and not give credit. Especially when you’re a group of artists. Please do better.”
It is also revealed that after Kelly Sweeney’s post, HYBE has credited her on ILLIT’s video.
Below are some comments from netizens regarding this topic:
- Do they even have anything original at this point?
- HYBE really knows no moderation, their image cannot be saved now
- Another day, another ILLIT controversy….
- Can they stop copying another’s work for once…
- It took the original choreographer speaking up for a meager line of credit. HYBE is so foul.
On the other hand, NewJeans’s performance directors also recently accused ILLIT of plagiarizing NewJeans’ choreography in a past CF, drawing attention.
