Brad Pitt’s daughter ‘Shiloh’ and ‘Sako Makita’…The performance system that completes K-pop

Shiloh Jolie, teaser video capture from the ‘What’s a Girl to Do’ music video. Image capture|Starship Entertainment YouTube channel

Shiloh Jolie has entered the K-pop market. She is known as the biological daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

According to a report by the U.S. entertainment outlet ‘E! News’, Shiloh was evaluated solely on her performance under the same conditions as the other participants without revealing her background on site. It is even reported that she auditioned under the alias ‘Shi’ to conceal her identity. Shiloh’s dancing ability was first mentioned when Brad Pitt said in an interview with the U.S. entertainment outlet ‘Entertainment Tonight (ET)’ that “It brings a tear to the eye(to the point of tears)”.

The work in which she took part as a K-pop dancer is WJSN Dayoung’s ‘What’s a Girl to Do’ music video. Public attention naturally turned to Shiloh, and my own gaze was not much different. Back right of Dayoung, hoop earrings and a lip piercing. Shiloh’s appearance was brief but striking.

However, if you look at this scene a little differently, a more interesting story emerges. Dayoung’s music video reads as a sign of where K-pop choreography is being made now and how it is expanding. If K-pop choreography used to be exported as a finished product, it has now begun to cross borders from the production stage. What deserves attention in Dayoung’s music video is not the gossip that “a celebrity’s daughter appears”, but the fact that K-pop performance is being created through global auditions and the participation of overseas dancers. The very way choreography is produced is changing.

This trend continues in another form with ILLIT’s ‘Bubee’.

This song is the opening theme for the TV animation ‘Magical Sisters Lulu Toriri’, with choreography by Japanese choreographer Sako Makita. She is a choreographer who has led the challenge craze by creating routines for popular J-pop idol groups, and the performance for ‘Bubee’ is likewise a challenge for friends·lovers·families to enjoy together.

Photo courtesy of|BELIFT LAB(HYBE)

The two cases introduced in this column come together as one.

K-pop is no longer a simple cultural product completed in Korea and exported overseas. It is now created through creators and performers from multiple countries, and then established as participatory content completed as users around the world follow along. Fans are no longer just spectators; they are the final element that completes the choreography. K-pop dance no longer belongs only to stars.

To grasp the essence of the K-pop industry, let us strip away ‘who was cast, which country’s choreographer made it, and on which platform it spread’. What remains is a single move that makes you want to imitate it, a single rhythm that makes you want to line up together. The more the production structure globalizes and the distribution structure is reorganized around short-form, the more what remains at the end is a clearer language of the body. That is because this is the performance system that completes K-pop today.

As we conclude the 11th installment, K-pop is no longer the product of a particular nation or company but a system that is constantly reconfigured through artists of diverse nationalities and genres within structures of collaboration. What matters now is not who made it, but how much it makes people want to follow along. Within this flow, I hope the boundary between large corporations and smaller agencies will also be reshaped, and I look forward to the K-pop performance system evolving in a healthier and more expansive direction.