It’s 2019 and I’m on a kpop journey, led joyfully and competently by my friend-coworker-neighborhood-kpop-scholar Ryan Khosravi.

Recently Ryan showed me this video (a mere bullet point in the lecture slides of Ryan’s kpop curriculum) and I can’t stop watching it.

It’s Ten and WinWin from the sub-unit WayV of NCT (look at me, using words!) doing a dance cover of lovely by Billie Eilish and Khalid:

Sometimes I wonder if I’m expressively stunted by never learning how to dance.

Like how sometimes it’s easier to understand someone’s feelings by looking at their face, are there things, thoughts, emotions that are best expressed through dance? Are there things, thoughts, emotions that I feel internally but cannot communicate because they are only expressible through dance?

Growing up, I knew some Korean-American kids who could understand Korean when they heard it, but they couldn’t speak Korean themselves. I always wondered what that would feel like.

Does it maybe feel a bit like how I feel, watching a dancer? Like dancers are able to communicate to me, and in this case something so clear and fittingly lovely, but I don’t have the language to reply.

I’m grateful I at least have this one-way lopsided comprehension, though.

Imagine watching this and not feeling anything!