PROFILE:
Group Name: Yours Truly
First Dance Cover: After School / Girls Generation Medley
Latest Dance Cover: IZ*ONE - Violeta
If you are not familiar with these four ladies and the rest of Yours Truly then I'm afraid you have been missing out. But don't feel bad I have taken it upon myself to introduce these talented gals to you. This is Yours Truly, Vancouver's favourite K-Pop dance cover group. Not only have they been doing dance covers and uploading them on YouTube for many years now, they have been dancing together for a very long time too. Theo, Steph and Kim all met at university and danced together since then. Kim and Frances also danced at the same dance studio and that is how they became friends and also started dancing together.
They started doing covers to practice their dancing and then decided to post them on YouTube for fun.
When choosing their name, they made sure that it not only sounded good, but fit in with their style and personalities. The name Yours Truly was chosen for a number of reasons. One of them was to capture the essence of signing off kind of like saying Sincerely at the end of a letter. Kim explained the second reason by referring to quote, "With dance covers you can say that oh they're just copying and stuff but we like to make sure that our pieces include a little bit of ourselves in them so we try and change up certain aspects of the dance cover to suit ourselves."
Yours Truly is now an established dance cover group and they have done a few cool things over the years. One of my personal favourites was their cover of Noir by Sunmi. Yours Truly's cover was spear headed by their Maknae Frances. When I asked her how she came up with such beautiful choreography she told me about the whole process. To create this beautiful dance piece Frances listened to and studied the song extensively; she made sure to capture the essence of the song from listening to it multiple times. Frances also got inspiration from a number of dancers that helped her learn what movements would look good with the song. After studying some of Sunmi's other choreography, and getting help from the rest of the group members she was able to create the amazing choreography you can watch below (P.S. I think they should have won the contest but what do I know).
If you watch enough of Yours Truly's videos then you'll see that they do a lot of covers for solo artists like the one you see for Noir above. When I asked them what it was like they all screamed "more lip-syncing!" LOL!!! Their professionalism as well as friendship shows in how they decide who will dance in what position for each cover. So they have a simple system: Everyone has first dibs on their bias and also they consider who will suit each position the most. Theo also mentioned that they are very vocal about what part they want to take and make sure they discuss the positions with each other. They use the same system for solo dances too.
When I asked the ladies what their favourite covers were I got so many different answers. For aesthetics Frances loved Blood Sweat and Tears by BTS because firstly it was such a great year for BTS and also "the song is great we all looked great, the dancing was great, everything was great I think." In terms of dancing she talked about Black on Black by NCT 2018 because they got to collaborate with some of their close friends and become closer with them through the dance.
Kim's favourite was also Blood Sweat and Tears because it was the first cover where they got to book a location and be extra with the production. Her favourite cover dance was Don' t Wanna Cry by Seventeen because coordinating all those people was hard and also despite Theo hurting her foot the night before filming, they were able to still release a great cover.
Steph chose Starry Night by Mamamoo as her aesthetic choice because after they reacted to the song and loved how beautiful it was they decided to quickly learn the moves and film it that same week. Despite getting bitten by mosquitoes on filming day they still managed to turn out a great cover. Dance wise, Steph chose Anpanman by BTS because of how much fun the dance is. It also came out really clean which was satisfying for her.
Theo chose Mic Drop by BTS as her favourite dance cover aesthetically because they put so much work into not only analyzing the song and video but also recreating it to the best of their abilities. Dance wise she chose Getting Closer by Seventeen and Black on Black by NCT 2018 because again they were able to coordinate so many people and create something great.
For their least favourite dance covers they said they didn't have any but there were two dances that were particularly challenging. They chose Boomerang by Wanna One and Hard Carry by Got7. Boomerang was hard because no fancams or dance videos had been released by the time they had their practice so they had to edit the music video and guess most of the dance which made it challenging to learn. The dance came out great despite the hard process behind the scenes. Hard Carry by Got 7 was challenging because the day they decided to shoot, things just kept going wrong and the filming process ended up being longer than they had intended.
If you watched the MAMA awards then you would have known that Yours Truly was one of the presenters for one of the awards along with many other YouTube creators. When I asked them how they felt about it they thought it was really cool that they were able to be a part of that and that despite the process of filming a video for every nominee and sending in their videos, they were able to present BTS with their award. My favourite reaction though was when Theo said "OMG they've actually seen us react to them now so now they know who we are and have seen our faces!"
After sitting down with Yours Truly and getting to know them a little bit I realized one thing. Their success comes from their dance experience, teamwork, friendship and a genuine love for K-Pop. When I asked them if they thought they would be popular, they told me about how they do this out of genuine love for dance and K-Pop and that it isn't about views and subscribers. The humility that they showed me throughout the interview is why I and many other people enjoy their content so much. They are talented, dedicated but most of all they are friends and genuine K-Pop fans which is what I think makes them stand out in the crowd.
Special shout out to Soju Events' amazing photographer John who took these beautiful photos and thank you so much to Yours Truly for taking the time to sit down and do this interview with me. Next time we meet please teach me how to dance :)
Be sure to check out Yours Truly on either YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter if you haven't already and show them some love.
XO,
Fadzi.