On February 28, on the darkened stage at KSPO DOME in Seoul, 25 giant boxes draped in red fabric seized the crowd’s attention. The boxes stirred like beating hearts, while sharp keyboard notes sounding like “What if…” echoed all around. And then, emerging from one of the boxes was j-hope, microphone in hand. ARMY BOMBs flashed wildly, and the wild flickering was joined by excited voices cheering at the tops of their lungs. It was the moment that “hope” returned to the stage. “j-hope Tour ‘HOPE ON THE STAGE’ in SEOUL” opened on February 28 and lasted three nights, kicking off the wider tour marking the long-awaited return of j-hope on the stage.

“Some might think of a j-hope concert as having a lighthearted vibe, but we wanted to defy expectations,” says Jungjae Ha, Lead Professional with HYBE 360 Concert Production Studio 1, who directed the entire production. j-hope’s stage brimmed with contrasting deep red lighting with black-and-white visuals, and special effects emulating fire filled the space with an intense gloominess. “HOPE ON THE STAGE” opened with consecutive tracks from his album “Jack In The Box,” immediately drawing audiences in. j-hope stood mic in hand, bathed in red light for opener “What if…,” commanding frenzied applause with his mere presence. He then moved onto “Pandora’s Box,” “Arson,” and “STOP,” his energy reaching every corner of the stage with searing vocals and nonstop moves. “I wanted to get across the energy that ‘j-hope’ signifies,” the BTS member says of the concert’s opening. “I was nervous since that part requires the most focus and I had to sort of hypnotize myself.”  The final song of the opening section was “MORE,” for which the black-and-white boxes, which had been arranged like a chessboard, transformed into towering stairs. “We put a number of Easter eggs for ARMY into ‘MORE,’” Ha explains, and these intricate prop choices and dynamic effects elevated “MORE” into an almost cathartic moment early in the show. The opening line, “Yeah I’m thirsty,” encapsulated j-hope and ARMY’s shared thirst for the stage and showed the singer was going to make the rest of the concert just as unforgettable.

The second part of the show revolved around tracks off “HOPE ON THE STREET VOL.1” and j-hope kicked it off dancing solo onstage. Clad in clothes and accessories with a streetwear vibe, j-hope danced on a path provided by the boxes before walking its length. After finishing a performance of “on the street (solo version),” a backup crew dance battle unfolded, after which j-hope returned with a boombox in hand. From there, he and another dancer pull off moves side by side, doing the title dance to “lock / unlock (with Benny Blanco, Nile Rodgers).” “We wanted to do things you don’t see in a typical mainstream concert, like an actual dance battle,” Ha explains. “We wanted each part to be able to stand on its own, apart from the whole.” In the case of the concert’s second section, dance took center stage. j-hope transitioned from there to rapping solo to “i don’t know” (with HUH YUNJIN of LE SSERAFIM), then joining a house dancer beside him with some moves of his own. For “i wonder…” (with Jung Kook of BTS), j-hope rapped center stage while two dancers popped in the back, later joining more backup dancers engaged in jazz-funk dance for the chorus. The idol set the mood for each song with the perfect crew of dancers alongside him and putting his own mastery of several different styles on display. “The most important thing was that j-hope could pull it off,” Giwon Goo, from BIGHIT MUSIC’s Performance Directing Part 1, notes. “I don’t think there’s any other artist who could pull that section off.” Minseong Kim, head of Goo’s team, reinforces the point that j-hope’s talent for dance was at the very core, adding, “Street dance isn’t a style you can even try to imitate without years of practice.” Dance is more about building up your muscle memory, requiring the kind of effort that a short investment just can’t provide. j-hope not only absorbed complex choreography while navigating the ever-changing stage setup, but also pulled off the moves for a rapidly shifting assortment of styles with an air of effortlessness, all while showing great back-and-forth with the dance crew. “What made it feel perfect was that j-hope didn’t just perform the choreography—he was fully engrossed in the moment, sharing eye contact with the street dancers,” Kim says, underlining what made this section of the concert something only j-hope could do. As seen in the “HOPE ON THE STREET” docuseries, j-hope’s whole journey began with dance, and he brought that part of his identity to life in the second part of the concert with his moves and his music. The final song of the section, “Trivia 起: Just Dance,” was clearly a deliberate choice—a solo piece from BTS’s album “LOVE YOURSELF 結 ‘Answer,’” written by j-hope and comparing his love of dance to a love that’s destined to be. “The foundation of my music is ultimately dance, so I wanted to make my admiration for the dancers I work with clear and ensure my identity shone through” during the second section, j-hope explains. “I wanted the performance to reflect my intense childhood dream of dance and the pure joy I felt back then.”

“While we often adjust performances to account for an artist’s energy levels, j-hope’s never runs out,” Goo explains. “He puts every last thing he’s got into elevating the performance, no matter what.” j-hope’s dedication could be seen in the relentless middle and latter sections of “HOPE ON THE STAGE,” which he performed without a break. For rap-heavy songs like j-hope’s career-starter “1 VERSE,” “Base Line,” and “HANGSANG” (feat. Supreme Boi), j-hope freely moved around the whole stage, engaging with the audience like a pro without ever letting his vocals waver. Impressively, he even managed to capture all the energy of BTS’s song “MIC Drop” by himself, complete with perfect dance moves. “We believed j-hope could hold his own perfectly,” Goo says. “We were more focused on how the dancers could complement his energy.” j-hope’s undying endurance and swagger was similarly reflected in ARMY’s passionate cheering. “j-hope considers each concert a shared experience performed by everyone,” says Seongeun Yoon, also on the Performance Directing Team. “For him, every person in the venue, including the crowd is putting on the two-and-a-half-hour marathon together,” making ARMY, energized by their artist, as much a part of the show as him.

The concert entered its final phase right at the peak of the excitement. After j-hope finished performing “Outro: Ego,” the crowd burst into applause. The singer then fell back with a splash. Soon after, the big screen revealed j-hope waking up onstage again on the “Daydream” bed, catching his fans completely off guard. “Fans naturally would’ve expected ‘Hope World’ to come next after hearing the water, but our aim was to turn things around and do ‘Daydream’ instead,” Ha explains. The unexpected twist switched up the atmosphere of the concert, bringing the show into a new “fantastical” chapter as it headed toward the climax. “We put ‘Chicken Noodle Soup’ (feat. Becky G) and ‘Hope World’ at the end to try and just finish in a total explosion of energy,” Yoon says. While the middle portion of the show kicked off with the sugary “Sweet Dreams” (feat. Miguel), now the audience was on their feet, singing and dancing along to “Chicken Noodle Soup” and into the finale, “Hope World.” The encore, starting suddenly with “= (Equal Sign),” was designed to put j-hope and his audience close together, with the BTS member coming down towards the crowd so they could really be a part of the performance. “Right from the start, we wanted to avoid the typical encore formula where the artist comes out with the music playing, and instead suggested having j-hope say something first,” Ha explains. “j-hope then added his own idea of going up close to the audience and being at their eye level while singing,” reflecting how j-hope constantly shares ideas with the staff and plays the role of both “performer and producer.”

It had been four months between when j-hope was discharged from the military in October until when he returned to the stage. The performance directors emphasize how not only was it a tight window to work with in terms of rehearsal, but that the idol was simultaneously working on new songs as well. “He oversaw the entire rehearsal process and sent messages about anything requiring feedback,” Kim reveals, illustrating j-hope’s meticulous effort despite the short timeframe. “After reviewing the first Seoul show, he made detailed changes for the second day.” His intense dedication made it possible to put on a show that long and that full of energy with no breaks. The launching-off point of “HOPE ON THE STAGE” was j-hope’s thirst—one so strong, no constraints could stand in his way. “For two years, both j-hope and ARMY were incredibly hungry for a concert, and we started by asking how we could channel that into the show,” Ha says, explaining the reason the dual meaning of “hope” became the core concept of the concert. In the video that opened the concert, j-hope is carrying a box containing one of his “hopes” somewhere, and the stage likewise had boxes on it. The 25 boxes, moved individually via lifts, transformed the stage throughout the show into different imaginary spaces as j-hope needed. Throughout “HOPE ON THE STAGE,” the boxes became translucent boxes hiding “Jack In The Box” and a twisted Möbius strip of a staircase for “MORE.” The boxes formed pathways for j-hope to dance and walk on, created the room he awakened in for “Daydream,” and more, bringing to life the ideas dreamed up in the planning stages. “j-hope’s imagination becomes reality,” Yoon says, and as seen in the final video, j-hope and his hope-filled box lead him to none other than backstage. His desire and imagination became reality when the real j-hope stepped back onstage with hope in hand to give the real ARMY an encore.

In essence, “HOPE ON THE STAGE” made clear the fact that j-hope’s world is the stage. Fittingly, the show ended with “NEURON” (with Gaeko, yoonmirae), a song named after the dance crew he was a part of before debuting. Filling even the encore with dance, j-hope honored his roots by calling out each dancer by name during the finale while pulling off flawless choreography. “We wanted to put on a performance that was entirely j-hope’s world—j-hope’s stage,” Kim explains. “HOPE ON THE STAGE” retraced his footsteps one by one in a show while also serving the core goal of keeping things so exciting the audience could hardly contain themselves. Like the boxes capable of transforming into anything at will, it was a show that only j-hope could put on, one only he could push to such perfection, one that wasn’t a conclusion but a new beginning. Perhaps no one captures the significance of it quite as well as j-hope himself.

“For someone who loves performing as much as I do, ‘HOPE ON THE STAGE’ is ultimately something close to ‘eternity,’” he says. “I think it’ll be the performance that made me, that revealed who I am. I hope to continue to show more and more of j-hope on the stage.”