Lia Kim Shares Stories Behind Choreographing For Sunmi And TWICE

Lia Kim recently appeared on the February 18 broadcast of KBS Cool FM’s “Park Myung Soo’s Radio Show” to talk about her work as a choreographer.

During the program, Lia Kim revealed that her given name was Kim Hye Rang. When asked by Park Myung Soo why she used her current name Lia Kim, the choreographer revealed, “I’m involved in a lot of overseas activities, but I thought that [my given name] would be too hard for foreigners to pronounce. I thought that anyone in the world could pronounce ‘Lia,’ so I went with that.”

Lia Kim is known for working with artists such as Lee Hyori, TWICE, Sunmi, I.O.I, and many more. As she introduced herself, Lia Kim also mentioned that she had gotten her start after choreographing Lee Hyori’s dance for an Anyclub commercial as well as dances for future tracks on the artist’s second album.

She revealed that the choreography for the focal point of TWICE’s hit track “TT” took some time to create. She stated, “TT is an emoticon, right? I thought of different things, and when I finally tried out the choreography with my fingers, I thought it looked pretty so I used that.”

Lia Kim then revealed more stories behind her famous girl group dances. She remarked, “It was like this for ‘TT’ too, but I first receive Park Jin Young’s version of the songs for the guide music. When I create the choreography, I do it while listening to Park Jin Young’s version. But what’s cool is that he’s really good at portraying the voice of a cute girl. So I was able to choreograph the tracks with [his version].”

In response to questions about Sunmi’s “Gashina” and “24 Hours,” Lia Kim commented, “Because I worked with Sunmi while doing ‘Gashina,’ I want to work with her again. As soon as I first heard ‘Gashina,’ I felt something special. ‘TT’ was really cute, but for ‘Gashina,’ I felt chills running throughout my entire body. While choreographing ’24 Hours,’ I also received a lot of advice from modern dancers.”

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