ATEEZ: Concert

Hey! Hallie here!

Despite being anxious about the concert because of the current pandemic situation, my sister and I decided to be as careful as possible while attending day two of ATEEZ’s concert in LA! This concert was amazing. The members gave every single song their all, kept up the energy for all of their difficult choreography throughout, and spoke to Atiny for so long that the concert ran long. It was incredible to not only see the members perform live, but also to see them goof off and enjoy being in front of Atiny. I expected this concert to be great, but it really exceeded my expectations. There were even surprises throughout that I didn’t expect, one of them being a switch of bias wrecker for me because Yeosang’s stage presence blew me away. I’m going to arrange this post a bit differently because there was so much audience interaction that I feel it deserves its own section. So let’s get into it!

Performance:

As usual, the concert started immediately on time because of the music video showings leading up to the beginning of the concert. The music videos were fun, especially “The Real” which was the last song to play before the opening song and which received the light dimming treatment. Then eight silhouettes appeared on the curtain and curtain rise brought our opening song “WONDERLAND (Symphony No.9)”. This song was one of the ones I was looking forward to seeing the most and it was an epic start to the concert. Hongjoong nailed the opening, Jongho hit his crazy note change live, Seonghwa came out with a sword, and all of the members brought serious energy and skill to the choreography. I was expecting them to go into another song immediately afterwards, but here they gave them their first moment to speak with us. There were quite a few more stops for audience check-ins than I’m used to, and I really loved it. But I’ll get into that later. Afterwards they started “Pirate King”, an essential song for an ATEEZ concert that Hongjoong led with grace. “Say My Name” came afterwards. The last part of the song, where the beat picks up and the fire effects start, rightfully made Atiny lose their minds. “Treasure” and “Precious” are songs that are connected and, because of that, were performed back to back. This duo marked two of my favorite performances we saw all night. It’s so satisfying to see the beginning of “Treasure” start with Hongjoong kneeling on the floor with his eyes covered, only for “Precious” to end the same way as though time has been reversed. “Treasure” was also the first time that night that we saw demon Hongjoong come out in a major way and I screamed louder than I thought possible. Plus, the choreography for both of these songs is absolutely mesmerizing, particularly when Mingi took the forefront and brought up the energy to a new level. And props to Yunho for leading all these songs as their amazing dance leader. He did an incredible job.

After this we had a break, and then the silhouette effect was used again, which is always an epic entrance, to lead into “Utopia”. “Utopia” is definitely a really hype song and it brought all of the energy immediately back up after the break. Next was “Better”, a lovely song with an amazing message, and given the slower pace I wasn’t really expecting much choreo. But there was great choreo to go along with it. In fact, this was about the song where I realized San was being pulled forward during dances a lot and I absolutely think he deserves it. We also got a really cute moment where Mingi made Hongjoong jump to retrieve his mic before his verse could start. He was kind enough to kneel while giving it back. Continuing with the slower song trend, “Still Here” was next, a song that is emotional to many Atiny who have waited to see ATEEZ through quarantine. Yunho kissed Mingi’s hand during this song and everyone in the audience completely melted. “Wave” came next, which brought the energy back up and gave us some adorable Yeosang and Jongho moments. Then we were blessed with “Inception”. This was about where I realized Yeosang was slowly creeping into my bias wrecker position. The song begins with all of the members wearing masquerade masks to highlight the dreamlike theming of the song. Yeosang leads the intro dance in this mask and he basically hypnotized me with his grace. This man is seriously so beautiful. How do you follow up a performance like that? With “Deja Vu” of course! “Deja Vu” is one of my favorite ATEEZ songs and seeing it live solidified that. All of the members were feeling the choreography so much that you couldn’t help but get pulled into the song.

“Take Me Home” was another one of my favorite performances of the night, which surprised me. The entire song they played around with partitions for each member, hiding them while they moved on and off the stage at different times and ending the performance with a cool disappearing effect. “Desire” came next, which was a very pleasant surprise. San does so well during concepts like this and Mingi, as always, ups the intensity in an extremely satisfying way at the end. Speaking of intensity, I danced so much during “HALA HALA” that I felt like my light-tiny arm was going to fall off. You can’t sleep on songs like “HALA HALA”. “Answer”s choreography always gets me and the members delivered everything I expected from it and more. And then we got an epic Wooyoung and San dance break. I haven’t talked a ton about Wooyoung so far, but here I just want to say that his dancing was on point the entire night and his on-stage chemistry with San made multiple performances feel complete. This dance break was no different. It also set the mood for “Fireworks (I’m The One)”, another one of my favorite songs. Jongho once again showed off why he’s one of the best vocalists in K-Pop during this song and I love him for it. “Good Lil Boy” was another song I didn’t expect, but this song has another great message. It was nice to hear it live. The song went right into “The Leaders”, which was a mashup I didn’t expect but went crazy over. Next was “THANXX”, “To the Beat”, and “Rocky” all right after one another. This series of songs was insane to hear back to back simply because of the amount of energy ATEEZ maintained through all three. And yes, Mingi was shirtless during the dance break and we all screamed. After this we went into “The Real” which I had been waiting for all night and which didn’t disappoint. Mingi and Yeosang killed the dance break in this one as well.

The last few songs were the closing and emotional set. “Eternal Sunshine gave us all a moment of happiness while the closing of the concert was incoming, as did “Dancing Like Butterfly Wings”, both of which had more of a relaxed and audience-centered feel to them. If you want to see “Dancing Like Butterfly Wings”, the members filmed themselves during that performance, so if you couldn’t make it, check out their YouTube! “Star 117” was emotional to both ATEEZ and Atiny. This in particular was the song where there wasn’t a dry eye in the entire arena. But “Turbulence” was incredibly emotional too. Especially because Jongho came back on stage for this one after having to take a bit of a break. If you’ve heard about day one of the LA concert, you probably know that Jongho hurt himself about halfway through the concert and had to take several breaks throughout. He was still obviously injured on this day, but he gave every performance his all and hardly ever left the stage. Seeing him come back for “Turbulence” was emotional all on its own. I’m so thankful to Jongho for all the work he put into the concert and I hope he’s resting well.

Audience Interaction:

So many things happened during this concert that I couldn’t possibly remember them all. However, I do want to highlight some of my favorite moments. Firstly, we chanted for multiple members during the concert, but never so loud as the moments where Hongjoong asked us to cheer for Jongho. Hongjoong was very worried for Jongho through the concert but he was pleased to hear how loudly we cheered for him and even more pleased to see how flustered it made Jongho. Also, Seonghwa and Yunho gave us a completely unprompted performance of “La La Land”. Yunho’s laughter throughout brightened the entire room. Also, can we talk about the equally unprompted workout session Yunho and Yeosang started? Random, but way too impressive. At some point during the show Mingi encouraged the audience to applaud Hongjoong’s good looks so, on his command, we cheered until Hongjoong took his jacket off. He blushed quite a bit and told us not to like sexy things too much. I respect it, Hongjoong. I’d also like to point out a moment that was both very sad and very hilarious at the same time, where Hongjoong asked us all to cheer for the new set of KQ Fellas attending the concert. He made the mistake of hinting that they might be better than ATEEZ, which Atiny loudly disagreed with. It kind of undermined Hongjoong’s attempts at getting us to cheer for the new members, but we cheered for them afterwards and Hongjoong laughed about it. Hongjoong also thanked Atiny for teaching him to use “father” instead of “daddy”. Good job Atiny. When all of this was over, though, the members thanked us all for being their stars while they were going through difficult times and Hongjoong encouraged all of us to keep going when things get hard. I can’t wait to see them when they return. And they will return! Hongjoong confirmed that they’ll be back this year! Look out for that Atiny!

Don’t do anything fun until I get back!

Hallie