Cover dance (also known as dance cover) is the act of replicating a dance

choreography Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...

, particularly from

Japanese idol An is a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese popular culture, Japanese pop culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in other performance skills such as acting, dancing, and modeling. Idol ...

Korean idol An idol () is a type of entertainer who works in the field of Korean popular music (K-pop), either as a member of a group or as a solo act. They typically work for an entertainment agency that operates a highly managed star system that idols a ...

music acts and

Vocaloid is a singing Speech synthesis, voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project between Yamaha Corporation and the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. The s ...

songs. Cover dances may be uploaded onto video-sharing services like

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

and

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

in which

dancer Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

s reenact the

of a song or

music video A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...

or perform an original choreography for an existing song.

History

Cover dances first gained popularity online in Japan in March 2007, with many people posting videos of themselves performing the choreography for "

Hare Hare Yukai is the ending theme song to the 2006 anime adaptation of ''The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'' (the first book in the ''Haruhi Suzumiya'' light novel series by Nagaru Tanigawa and several other short stories). The song is performed by the charac ...

" (colloquially referred to as the "Haruhi dance"), the ending theme song to the 2006 anime adaptation of ''

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a Japanese light novel series written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito. It was first published in 2003 by Kadokawa Shoten in Japan with the novel ''The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'', and has since been followe ...

''. This later grew to include cover dances of

Berryz Kobo was a Japanese idol girl group formed by Up-Front Promotion in 2004 and associated with Hello! Project. The group's members consisted of Hello! Project Kids members Saki Shimizu, Momoko Tsugunaga, Miyabi Natsuyaki, Chinami Tokunaga, Maa ...

and other Japanese

idol Idol or Idols may refer to: Religion and philosophy * Cult image, a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents * Murti, a devotional image of a deity or saint used during puja ...

singers and groups. Cover dance videos created through MikuMikuDance were also associated with the category. It became established as a genre known as on video-sharing websites, named after the search keyword on the video-sharing website

Niconico , known before 2012 as , is a Japanese video sharing service based in Tokyo, Japan. "Niconico" or "nikoniko" is the Japanese sound symbolism, Japanese ideophone for smiling. As of 2021, Niconico is the 34th most-visited website in Japan, accordi ...

. People who performed cover dances were known as . Notable who later became idols themselves include from

Danceroid Danceroid (stylized as DANCEROID) was a Japanese female net idol dance group affiliated with Beautiful Group talent agency. They were formed in October 2009 when they posted a video of themselves dancing to a Vocaloid song on the Nico Nico Douga ...

and Dempagumi.inc, Beckii Cruel, and Keekihime.

Impact

Cover dance videos on YouTube get tens of thousands of views, with groups like Chocomint HK becoming viral sensations. A worldwide phenomenon, Paris has become a hub for recording these videos, and has a K-pop dance academy. The K-POP Cover Dance Festival has been held annually since 2011. The competition takes place worldwide with the final round in Seoul.

References

{{Dance Dance culture Music videos

History

Impact

See also

References