When Its Creator Danced It, Korea Finally Saw the 20 Seconds It Had Doubted: A2O LITE’s ‘NEON’ Intro

Featured photo: A2O LITE, October 21, 2026. Photo: K-POPIT via YouTube / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

On October 28, dancer J-Black, who created the 20-second intro of A2O LITE’s “NEON,” danced it himself, and Korean fans who watched came to one conclusion: “The original is something else. So the A2O members really did pull it off.” The 20 seconds by Chinese members Xili and Aijing, who were at the center of the No. 1 Korea didn’t want to believe, came back through the creator’s own body as proof of their skill.

I’ll confess as a fan: only after watching his video did I go back and replay those 20 seconds from the start. Only then could I see how hard each move that had looked easy really was.

The creator’s dance proved the members’ skill

The video went up not on J-Black’s own account but on the official account of tvN talk show You Quiz on the Block, hosted by Yoo Jae-suk, titled “[First release] J-Black’s NEON: the original home of the intro choreography” (Xports News, October 28). A day earlier, he had joked on Threads, “If you just demand ‘give us the dance, film it and post it,’ sure, like I’d ever…” and asked fans begging for a video to wait. When it dropped as a surprise, he wrote: “Waited a long time, huh?! Here you go!” (Xports News, Tenasia, October 28).

The comments moved from awe at the creator to awe at the members: “It’s more like martial arts than dancing,” “Watching the moves, I finally understand why they dance it that way,” and “So the A2O members really pulled it off” (Xports News, October 28). J-Black has said the choreography is “difficult enough that other artists couldn’t properly handle it either,” and that the beat is so fast it made fitting hip-hop choreography to it hard (Tenasia, October 28).

Also read: Ousted From SM, Lee Soo-man Just Beat the NCT He Built: A2O LITE Tops NCT WISH on Inkigayo

Fourteen hours of lessons, and longer hours alone

The two members didn’t spend long learning directly from the creators. Dancer Choi In-young, who co-created the choreography, said they “trained six times, 90 minutes each,” and J-Black put the total, including extra lessons, at about 13 to 14 hours. What he stressed came after that: “What matters isn’t the time we taught, it’s the time the members practiced on their own. Every time we went back, they’d really practiced. Xili especially came prepared” (Tenasia exclusive interview, October 27).

Of Xili, J-Black said, “Her grit is no joke.” On a day she was sick enough to have gone to the hospital the day before, she insisted she was fine and stayed to the end even when told not to push it. “It was amazing that someone so young had such a grown-up heart,” he recalled. Choi said Xili, who found hip-hop unfamiliar at first, “got noticeably better as time went on” and “without exception came thoroughly prepared whenever we gave her something to practice.”

Aijing was the opposite. In Choi’s words, she “handled hip-hop well from the very beginning.” During breaks she’d whine, “I’m tired, do we have to do it all from the top?” then dance brilliantly once the music started, and when it stopped, she’d pull a wind-up stag beetle toy out of her bag and wind it up, perfectly happy (Tenasia, October 27). Aijing’s much-talked-about intro spin grew out of J-Black’s signature move, turning the head and bending the left leg as she spins.

A dancer far from the idol world was called in

J-Black had thought of idol choreography as a world that had nothing to do with him, after sending in draft after draft that never got picked. But the A2O team showed him his own freestyle videos and said they wanted “J-Black’s style.” At the time, a back injury made it hard for him even to walk, so he asked longtime dancers Lee Dong-gyu and Choi In-young for help: he described the feeling, and the two translated it into movement (Tenasia, October 27).

The final polish belonged to the 74-year-old producer. “The choreography was completed thanks to Mr. Lee Soo-man fine-tuning the details,” J-Black said. “I only thought about how to spin technically, but Mr. Lee seemed to think all the way to how it should look on camera to capture the public’s eye” (Tenasia, October 27).

The 20 seconds once suspected of bots and judged by nationality were built from 14 hours of lessons and even longer practice by two young women, and only after the creator danced it himself did Korea see their weight. I’m already waiting to see how Xili and Aijing make those 20 seconds their own again on the next stage.

Sources

• Xports News, October 28, 2026: J-Black reveals the NEON intro on You Quiz, fan reactions
• Tenasia exclusive, October 28, 2026: J-Black and Choi In-young interview (conducted October 27)
• Tenasia, October 28, 2026: J-Black on social media, “Just wait a little”
• Lee Soo-man and A2O, Episode 2: The No. 1 Korea Didn’t Want to Believe