88 Variety Experts

The music switched on.

You got me feeling like a psycho, psycho 🎶

Instantly, Iris jumped up from her seat, recognizing the song from the girl group Red Velvet. It was released at the very end of 2019 and soon became one of the most favorite bops of 2020. Iris often took inspiration from Red Velvet's "velvet" concepts and choreographies.

These days, older groups like Red Velvet were in the limelight due to their seven year contract ending soon. It felt odd to Iris that groups she had known from when she had first joined the k-pop fandom many years ago would all soon be facing the decision of whether to continue or disband onto their solo ways.

Seven years felt so far away, but in fact, time passed really quickly. Seven years was both a long and short time in the k-pop world. Would LUXIA last that long? Or even longer and re-sign like BTS had? She hoped so, but no one could guess how situations and feelings could change over time.

Yet, Iris believed that she would pursue music forever. Today, it was their first variety show in their first year together as LUXIA. These seven years could be considered their golden years, so Iris was determined to make every single one count. Thus, no matter where the end of the seven year path led, she could leave or stay with no regrets.

While Iris danced expertly to Red Velvet's song—it was one of her personal favorites from the group, so she had learnt the choreography and lyrics due to her love for the song—Ahreum and Rinah looked on in wonder, making quite the adorable pair to viewers.

The show hosts noticed this and pointed them out, urging them to join. But they both cutely shook their heads quickly. So the hosts turned to Jiyeon and Cindy who watched Iris with more intent, serious looks.

"Eh? It looks like you're trying to learn from Iris's dancing by watching closely, Cindy?" One of the hosts joked.

Cindy replied charmingly, "This is a free dance demonstration. Of course I need to take advantage of it!"

Her witty remark made the hosts and staff on set laugh. Indeed, Iris was executing the choreography quite flawlessly and even added her own personal flair to make the dance all her own.

About five seconds after the laughter from Cindy's reply had dwindled down, Jiyeon suddenly hopped down from her seat and joined Iris during the last few seconds of the song and posed together at the end.

Seeing this, the hosts exclaimed, "Jiyeon?! I was expecting a silly dance to goof the ending, but your moves were so great?! Why didn't you join earlier?!"

Jiyeon cooled shrugged and lazily said, "I only knew this part well."

And again, the hosts burst out in laughter at this straight forward, dry response of hers. The LUXIA members had quite distinctive and engaging personalities. They were natural variety stars.

Onto the next song, more of the members joined for ITZY's 'Wannabe.' Not only did they all like this song and the choreography to it, they were all now good friends of ITZY since they had all first met that one time at JYP before debut.

So LUXIA supported ITZY and naturally knew this song and performance well. All of them participated for this song as well as the next song, IZ*ONE's 'Fiesta.' This song was from their second to last album before disbanding.

Although the four girls didn't know the IZ*ONE members like Iris did, they knew Lee Chaeyeon very well. So with this and their support for Iris's group before they became LUXIA, they all knew this dance.

But with the successive songs such as GFRIEND's 'Crossroads,' Dreamcatcher's 'Scream,' and Everglow's 'Dun Dun,' it was mainly Iris and Jiyeon dancing with the inclusion of Ahreum for her beloved Dreamcatcher, and Cindy and Rinah for some of their favorites.

And because they expressed knowing boy group dances pretty well, they also danced to these songs such as from BTS, GOT7, EXO, Ateez, Seventeen, NCT, and TXT. The hosts were impressed by Jiyeon's skill for these boy group dances in particular. Her performances further solidified her cool, girl crush charm. She was the king of boy group dances, making even girls' hearts flutter.

One host remarked humorously, "How is your dancing even better than some of the guys that dance to this?!"

Indeed, Jiyeon's charisma and powerful, sharp moves from her underground, street style dance days were manifesting themselves. More than girl group dances, she preferred boy group dances because she was used to and liked that style of dancing over typical girl choreographies.

Hence, that's why she was grateful that LUXIA struck a balance between feminine moves and more powerful moves often seen in boy group choreographies that used movements beyond their hips or hands—two common occurrences for feminine girl group dances.

But that didn't mean Jiyeon couldn't do softer or cuter concepts. However, at Big Hit, they wouldn't be going for a typical cute, sexy, or cool group. LUXIA was pioneering, avant-garde, daring, and bold. They broke the mainstream molds of k-pop while still staying within the loop in order to make themselves familiar enough to gain understanding and a following for their uniqueness.

It was this quality that made them distinctly special, but while it gained them many admirers, it also baffled and deterred others from being too different from mainstream pop.

From Random Play Dance, the variety show continued onto the next segment: a game between the members for a prize. For this session with LUXIA, they had to do the whisper challenge.

The girls were excited to do this game because it was one of their favorites from k-pop idol variety shows. All of them had held their stomachs in wild laughter from watching this game played by other groups. It was simply a recipe for humorous disaster.

"Manger Jjang oh de oy auction story like oy haste moar?"

Jiyeon slapped her forehead in response to Cindy's terrible skill at reading mouths. Although her Korean had greatly improved, she didn't know it fluently enough to be able to read mouths speaking in Korean very well.

"No!" Jiyeon sternly stated and crossed her hands.

"Manager Jang of the soy sauce factory likes soy paste more." She enunciated very carefully while gesturing with her hands.

"Man age jeans got so what facts toy night soy haste or?"

Jiyeon smiled weakly, turned around, and leaned against the wall. Her "I can't believe this, I'm so done" reaction got everyone dying of laughter.

Iris, as the one who started the whisper telephone chain off and thus didn't have headphones like the rest of her group, was holding her stomach and trying to keep herself standing from how hilarious this scene was.

The first pass off went very smoothly between her and Jiyeon, but now they got stuck at Cindy after the whole group first declared that with only five members, this game was a piece of cake.

Obviously, they ran into a snag early on, and it appeared there was no resolution. For the fans that would watch this at home, Cindy would acquire the hidden charm of being quite adorable and air-headed at times. It was discovered that the majestic queen had a cute and goofy side to her as well!

And for Ahreum, the next one in the link, after Jiyeon passed it off once Cindy's rendition was barely passable and the best it could be, the bubbly yet shy maknae would acquire the nickname of tongue twister and whisper game master. For shockingly, she had successfully deciphered Cindy's half-gibberish into what the sentence was supposed to be.

And of course, Rinah easily picked this up from Ahreum to complete the game and win the prize. Everyone on set was flabbergasted, wondering how Ahreum was able to salvage the game and clinch the win.

"Is Ariel's music loud enough? Do you even have the sound on?!" One host exclaimed in disbelief, being extra dramatic for the show.

"Nope, I'm just a master of riddles!" Ahreum giggled. "I realized this was a variation of the soy sauce and paste riddle, so I naturally just formed a sentence from what Cindy was trying to say."

"..." Cindy didn't know how to respond. She knew her Korean was worse than Iris who had not only spent a longer time in South Korea as well as studying, but her cousin was also just naturally great at academics including language.

And now, here she was standing in this white room with her cousin almost rolling on the floor in hilarity. Oh boy. She hadn't set out to be a variety star, and yet she was rocking it just naturally.

With Ahreum's innocent expression and Cindy's ashamed face, it was too funny for everyone even well after the game had ended. Nabbing the rookie group LUXIA so soon after debut turned out to be a good move by the variety show. The girls demonstrated no fear or clumsiness from engaging with the hosts, activities, and cameras.

LUXIA then wrapped the variety show up with a performance of their title track song, 'Dawn,' as per the show's tradition.

But while this day and variety show ended on a high note, one moment during this episode with LUXIA would mark the start of a fierce battle between them and the rest of k-pop that would ensue for a couple of years.

It was due to LUXIA's soon to be controversial dance of Black Pink's title track from their last comeback.

Not only had all five members of LUXIA joined in on the dance, but because they all loved Black Pink, and Black Pink only had four members, they had altered the original choreography.

While this wasn't controversial in itself, it was their alterations to the performance that triggered some toxic fans.

LUXIA's modifications piqued the variety show hosts' interest. So they made the girls perform the entire song in order to see what kind of alternative choreography they had made for five members.

On set, everyone was amazed and applauded LUXIA for making it still feel like a Black Pink choreography by sticking close to the musicality of the song and beat, yet it still felt quite different from the original.

As one host remarked insensitively, "It's so dynamic! I like this even better than the original!"

And thus, his thoughtless, but innocuous comment sparked rage from long time Black Pink fans and budding LUXIA ones. Unfortunately, the tactless host had unwittingly made LUXIA a target for one of the biggest girl groups internationally.

It was only when the Black Pink members themselves stood up to compliment the creativeness of the LUXIA choreography that the raging flames died down.

But while their considerate act for a junior in their industry had rectified the situation temporarily, time and time again, these two groups along with other big names like TWICE and rising big stars like EVERGLOW and even ITZY, their friends, would be pinned up against LUXIA.

Eventually, even boy groups weren't spared after a few years. Just like how BTS and Black Pink were pitted against one another by proud fans sometimes in the past, LUXIA experienced that with other rising boy groups of the new generation.

And when YG Entertainment was set to debut their new girl group after Big Hit beat them to the bullet, LUXIA would soon have a direct rookie competitor.

All of the girls would have to navigate this tricky landscape of comparisons and social expectations and rise to the top without slipping up. A controversial group was never what they set out to be, but it seemed that LUXIA was inadvertently always at the center of new drama until they could build solid footing by burning their youth away.