You have to jump a lot.
I'm going to be like a flying eggplant.
Hey everyone, it's Elise Hu, Asia correspondent
for NPR with my friend -
Kat Chow with Code Switch, also with NPR, here visiting.
And today we're going to try K-pop dance.
Of course, we just learned though, that -
we thought we were going to take a beginner's class, but that's not happening.
Nope.
Apparently, it's pretty advanced, which is
going to be interesting.
In the late 1990's Asia went through a huge
financial crisis, so South Korea's leaders
decided to use music to improve its image
and build its cultural influence.
The result was Korean Pop, or K-pop.
A style of pop music that typically features
techno beats and intensely choreographe
music videos, like these.
What, if anything, is the concept that we're
going after today?
It's a really manly dance, it's really wild.
It'll be awesome for a pregnant woman.
Let's do this!
We are jokes at this, but actual K-pop artist's
training regiments are not funny.
Trainees getting groomed by record labels
practice dance routines 5 to 12 hours a day.
Aspiring K-pop idols can be as young as 6
years old.
There's a lot of hip shaking.
And it's only like a few moves, but I still
can't do it!
I also couldn't follow a very basic routine.
That was just the warm up guys.
It was?!
One, two, three and five, six, seven, eight.
I can't believe they just picked it 
up that fast.
I don't even know what just happened!
Should we wrap up?
So, at the end of every Elise Tries we give
the experience a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Kat, what do you think?
I would definitely give that a thumbs down,
because it's not even that I can't do it physically,
but mentally too.
I just can't keep up.
I also agree.
I wouldn't call this "Elise Tries," I would
call it "Elise Fails."
Yeah, definitely fails.
Elise out.
That was really hard.
That was insane.
I have so much respect.
