Soompi K-Pop Dance Madness: Elite Eight

Soompi K-Pop Dance Madness is raging on! The Sweet Sixteen battles were fierce as several match-ups proved to be almost too close to call, fluctuating back and forth between the contenders while the vote was still out. But of course, the polls ended on March 31, and ultimately eight victors were named as the Elite Eight: Bora, Lay, Yunho, Lee Joon, Gikwang, Hyoyeon, Kai, and Mark. Which of these dancing idols will move onto the Final Four? Only you can be the judge. The polls will end on Wednesday, so get your votes in while you can!

A close match: Compared to the first round, few of the second round match-ups resulted in a landslide winner. As we noted, several of the matches went back and forth, and it was a matter of who was on top when the time was called. For example, Junho lost to Bora by less than one percent. The most significant win went to Lay, who beat Rain by taking 66% of the votes.

Supporting your biases vs. being objective: We’ll admit it — we definitely realize that the results have not necessarily reflected which candidates are actually the best dancers. And we feel sorry for the fans of those worthy idols who just happened to be up against someone who has a strong fanbase. This is nothing new in the world of K-Pop — if nothing else, this contest has been full of interesting surprises!

The gender divide (or lack thereof): A few people asked why we chose to pit males against females, since any such match might possibly be construed as unbalanced. Our response is that even if the ladies might be physically less likely to be able to perform backflips or high jumps, we just didn’t think that anyone really believed that women are less talented at dancing as a whole. When’s the last time you ever heard anyone say, “Sure, Kahi’s a good dancer… for a girl”? There are aspects of dancing that read as more feminine, and others that feel more masculine, so we figured everything should balance out in the end.

As it turned out, the female idols did have a disadvantage in this contest — they were less likely to have the fanbase of someone like Kai or Mark, and as such, we ended up only including twelve females in our contest. (Sorry about that!) But from this point on, the ratio has actually remained fairly consistent, proving that the voters aren’t systematically favoring the males, as has previously been suggested. (From twelve out of 32, it went to five out of sixteen, and then two out of eight.)

Here’s a quick look at the match-ups before we proceed to the voting. Got it? Good. Let’s start with the Pink and Orange Divisions!

Girls’ Generation’s Hyoyeon (#1) vs. BEAST’s Gikwang (#4)

TVXQ’s Yunho (#3) vs. MBLAQ’s Lee Joon (#8)

Halfway done! Now it’s on to the Blue and Green Divisions!

EXO’s Lay (#2) vs. SISTAR’s Bora (#6)

EXO’s Kai (#3) vs. GOT7’s Mark (#7)

That’s all for now. Feel free to check out the results of Round 1 and Round 2. Be sure to share with your friends, vote often, and make your voice heard by Wednesday! We’ll be back this week with the Final Four!