On June 10, TOMORROW X TOGETHER covered “Invitation” by Uhm Junghwa at Weverse Con Festival. As though raising the curtain, their five silhouettes appeared in front of the rising screens. Then, beginning with the song’s signature double clap, the lights came up, and there were the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER, dressed in silk shirts and wrap skirts overtop pants, with painted nails and fans in hand. The crowd immediately burst into excited cheering. When a video of the performance was released online, there was a flurry of comments like, “There’s a special mood about this performance that really evokes nostalgia for the original, even though it’s a gender swap,” and, “Their group has a really wide range.”

“As soon as I heard ‘Invitation,’ I knew TOMORROW X TOGETHER would be able to make it really cool,” choreography director Kim Subin, head of the BIGHIT MUSIC Performance Directing 2 Team, said. She explained how, once they chose the song, they tried to bring out the nuances of the original by having the idols “tilt their heads upwards with blank expressions and gaze off nostalgically.” They also added in “voguing, where you move the hands a lot and touch your body,” which wasn’t part of the original choreography. Voguing complements “how the group members’ long, outstretched limbs look,” thereby “maximizing the impact that moves where they touch their faces or arms have.” Here, a boy group took everything that made this legendary female artist’s performance amazing and brought it to the next level with their outfits and dance moves. Newcomers BOYNEXTDOOR covered “Hot Summer” by f(x) on July 13, less than two months after their own debut. YouTube channel M2 organized two dance medleys—one of girl groups covering boy groups, and another of boy groups covering girl groups—for a special year-end event. And a little before that, on KBS Song Festival (December 16), LEESEO from IVE, SULLYOON from NMIXX, HONG EUNCHAE from LE SSERAFIM, and MINJI and HYEIN from NewJeans covered SHINee’s song “Love like Oxygen.” TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s cover of “Invitation” at Weverse Con Festival was a milestone performance that exemplifies where the trend is headed. Here in 2023, gender swapping in the world of K-pop performances doesn’t make anyone bat an eye. There’s no longer a rigid line drawn between which songs can be performed by artists of which gender; a fantastic performance is a fantastic performance.

On April 16, 2016, SEVENTEEN performed a mash-up medley of hit songs from girl groups Girls’ Generation (“Lion Heart”), GFRIEND (“Rough”) and Red Velvet (“Ice Cream Cake”) on Music Core. Then again, later that year, they performed a mash-up of Girls’ Generation’s “Into the New World,” S.E.S.’s “(’Cause) I’m Your Girl” and Lee Hyori’s “U-Go-Girl” with their own then recently released song “BOOMBOOM” on December 26 for the SBS Awards Festival Gayo Daejeon. At a time when the differences between boy and girl group choreographies were considered set in stone, SEVENTEEN took the hip hop bounce moves from “Ice Cream Cake” and maxed them out, proving that the song and its accompanying choreography would look cool even when a boy group performed them. They also paid respect to Girls’ Generation, who came before them, by placing “Into the New World” at the climax of their Gayo Daejeon performance. SEVENTEEN then donned suits and covered “No.1” by BoA the following year at 2017 MAMA in Japan. By covering the song in classic boy-group attire, SEVENTEEN proved how exciting the song can be not just when it was originally performed by BoA when she was still a teen but also by a boy group 15 years later, therefore giving fresh acknowledgment to her historical significance.

Looking back now, the way SEVENTEEN showed their respect for the female artists who blazed the trail almost seems prophetic. Now that it’s become so popular for K-pop artists to cover one another’s songs in the form of dance challenges, boy and girl groups alike pay homage to each other’s dances by trying their best to make awesome covers. “There used to have to be a particular push behind things to see an artist covering someone else’s choreography,” Lee Eun Ji, a representative with the SOURCE MUSIC marketing team, said, “but with the rise of short-form content you can now see them doing a greater variety of dances.” In this way, dance challenges serve as a convenient way for girl and boy groups to try out one another’s choreographies. “Dance challenges don’t have the same high polish as some other content so what’s important is that the videos capture the artists in their everyday element,” Pyun Ji Eun, another representative with the SOURCE MUSIC marketing team, added. For that reason, such videos tend to be shot with backdrops that are commonplace to them, like the stairs at a TV network, the practice studio or a green room. It’s even provided an opportunity for girl and boy group members to dance together outside of special occasions like year-end performances. Look at NewJeans’ “Hype Boy” dance challenge: It’s full of energetic moves no matter who’s dancing to it. On the flip side, girl groups like fromis_9, LE SSERAFIM and NewJeans all showed how cool they could look dancing to the “Run BTS” challenge from fellow HYBE artist BTS.

This past December 24, TOMORROW X TOGETHER member YEONJUN got on stage for SBS Gayo Daejeon and performed the “ZOOM” (Jessi), “Shut Down” (BLACKPINK) and “Run BTS” dance challenges one after the other. As dance challenges grow ever popular, no one gives much thought about whether the choreography was originally for a female soloist, a girl group or a boy group—the songs just flow together naturally. Kim, the performance director, said the songs were chosen to give “a mix of three entirely different styles,” and so they chose “‘ZOOM’ for all its hip grooves, ‘Shut Down’ for the way it fluctuates between subtle and in your face, and ‘Run BTS’ for its all-out power.” By performing all these challenges, YEONJUN shows off just how far gender swapping in dance has come: Neither YEONJUN himself nor his audience care about the gender of the original artists, or in some cases they may not even be aware. What matters most is how well the song, artist and stage come together. 

For example, each of the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER have “their own approach to dance,” Kim said. SOOBIN “is really well suited toward high-energy songs and those that are bright and upbeat because he’s good with jumping since he’s really strong,” YEONJUN “makes a continuous personal effort to upgrade his dance skills, despite his natural talent, without even receiving any special direction,” TAEHYUN “is determined to do what he can’t yet and will do the same move repeatedly until he makes it work,” BEOMGYU “thinks a lot about what expression to make with his face to leave a lasting impression,” and HUENINGKAI “has the groove ingrained in his body so he looks amazing when he does any dance moves with a wave to them.” Because they created “their brand of group performance by mixing together each member’s own vibe … even if you were to direct another group in the exact same way, they wouldn’t be able to make it look the way” that TOMORROW X TOGETHER can, reflecting one important aspect of the direction in which K-pop is headed. Thanks to the blurred lines between gender norms now compared to the past, artists are able to find songs and moves that allow them to show off exactly what they want to without being so restricted by gender expectations. As Park So Yeon, LE SSERAFIM’s performance director, said in a previous interview with Weverse Magazine about “ANTIFRAGILE,” the way they dance expresses “what the members of the group aspire to.” Pyun said this is because, “whether doing a cover or a dance challenge, we always keep LE SSERAFIM’s ‘I’M FEARLESS’ message in mind.”

Working with TOMORROW X TOGETHER, Kim said, has given her a sense of where K-pop performances are headed now. “Right up until I directed for TOMORROW X TOGETHER,” she said, “I also thought there was a clear line” between girl and boy groups’ choreography. But then they put their spin on “Invitation.” The evaporation of those old boundaries allowed each of the artists to express themselves better using their own specialties. By lifting those limitations and erasing those lines, they take one step further into a world of endless possibilities—a world of greater diversity.