This looks like a refreshingly simple and heartwarming youth drama. KBS has been quietly preparing for the upcoming Dance Sports Girls, which has piqued my interest for its cast of relatively new faces and unconventional setting. Our titular girls comprise of Park Se-wan (I Am Not a Robot), Lee Joo-young (Ms. Baek), rookie Joo Hae-eun, Shin Do-hyun (The Third Charm), Lee Yoo-mi (20th Century Boy and Girl), and Kim Soo-hyun (Lingerie Girls’ Generation).
Set in the declining industrial seaside town of Geoje, these girls come together through their high school’s dance sports club. In the stills, we see two of our main dancers, Park Se-wan and Lee Joo-young, who look mighty awkward next to each other. Lee Joo-young’s character gets forced into joining up with the dance sports club by her teacher, played by veteran Kim Gab-soo (Mr. Sunshine), after getting caught up in some trouble. As for Park Se-wan’s character, she wants to become a movie director one day and so signs up for the club in her desperation to get into a university to achieve that dream.
Despite the prevalence of grades and university aspirations in Korean youth dramas, writer Kwon Hye-ji, who also penned Individualist Ji-young, wanted to skew away from those topics in favor of these girls working together towards one goal: a perfect dance performance. I thought that was a lovely sentiment, especially with Korea being so obsessed with academic pedigrees, and more true to the spirit of the KBS documentary that this drama is based on.
There’s been slight deviations from the source material though, and one of them is the introduction of Jang Dong-yoon’s (Mr. Sunshine) character, the sole male member of the dance club. I personally would’ve been happy to keep this cast all-female, but his character sounds like it will provide some relatable adolescent humor as a transfer student who hasn’t attended a co-ed school since his elementary school days.
All in all, I’m eager to see whether Dance Sports Girls lives up to my expectations, despite some of my concerns with PD Park Hyun-suk, who also directed Uncontrollably Fond. The KBS youth drama will follow Matrimonial Chaos beginning December 3.
