EXO's Growl reshaped K-pop choreography forever
The summer of 2013 brought a wave of heat across the Korean peninsula, but inside broadcast stages in Seoul, something far more transformative was taking shape. When EXO released "Growl" as the title track of their first studio album XOXO, the accompanying choreography did more than support the music. It rewrote the rulebook for how a nine-member idol group could move together, and how that movement could travel across screens, schools, and dance studios around the world.
For Australian listeners, "Growl" arrived at a moment when K-pop was just beginning to find a mainstream foothold outside the SBS PopAsia bubble. Fans in Sydney and Melbourne were trading concert footage at community meetups in Chatswood and Box Hill, while YouTube playlists of dance practice videos were quietly building an audience among teenagers in the suburbs of Perth and Brisbane. The choreography became a shared vocabulary that needed no translation.
What made "Growl" different from the dense, acrobatic dances that dominated K-pop at the time was its restraint. The members walked, paused, tilted, and snapped into position with surgical precision, and the absence of constant motion became the most powerful tool of all. That quiet confidence, paired with a hook that seemed designed for a ringtone, turned the song into a global phenomenon and the dance into a benchmark.
More than a decade later, the influence of the "Growl" routine can be traced in almost every boy group that followed. From the formation play of SEVENTEEN to the precision unison of Stray Kids and the camera-aware staging of newer acts, the DNA of that 2013 performance continues to live in the muscle memory of K-pop itself.
The release that shifted a generation
XOXO dropped in June 2013, and the repackage featuring "Growl" followed in August. The group promoted the track across the major Korean music shows, claiming an unbroken streak of wins on programs like M Countdown, Music Bank, and Inkigayo. Each stage was a masterclass in how choreography could be filmed, framed, and packaged for viral spread. The dance practice video, a format that K-pop agencies now use to share routines directly with fans, became one of the earliest examples of a practice clip surpassing the official music video in views.
What audiences saw was deceptively simple. The members moved in tight unison, executing a routine that looked approachable enough for a high school cover crew yet sophisticated enough to demand hours of rehearsal. The chorus featured a heel pivot and a shoulder roll that became iconic, instantly recognisable gestures that fans could replicate in living rooms from Parramatta to Penrith.
Minimalism and the power of restraint
Before "Growl," K-pop choreography often leaned into spectacle: flips, jumps, formation breakouts, and props. EXO's team, led by choreographer Rino Nakasone alongside the group's in-house performance director Kasper, made a deliberate choice to scale back. The routine leaned on subtle weight shifts, clean lines, and moments of stillness that made every subsequent move feel sharper.
This philosophy of doing less to say more rippled outward across the industry. Groups that launched in subsequent years studied how "Growl" used silence and spacing as choreographic tools. Australian dance studios offering K-pop classes in suburbs like Newtown and Brunswick soon found themselves teaching routines that drew on this same minimalist palette, asking students to find drama in a pause rather than a leap.
Formation work as a visual language
The choreography of "Growl" treated the stage like a canvas. The members rearranged themselves into V-shapes, diagonals, diamonds, and lines that mirrored the song's lyrical tension between confidence and vulnerability. Each camera cut in the official video was choreographed as carefully as the performers themselves, a holistic approach that treated direction and movement as one piece of storytelling.
This integration of visual staging became a template. It taught a generation of K-pop producers that choreography could be designed for the camera, not just the concert stage. The diamond formation during the pre-chorus, the way the group condensed into a tight cluster before exploding outward into the hook, became a reference point that newer groups still reverse-engineer. Watching a Stray Kids performance today, or studying the precision of a SEVENTEEN choreography video, one can trace a direct line back to the spatial choices made on that 2013 set.
From Seoul to Sydney: how Australian fans adopted the dance
Australian K-pop fandom has always been deeply choreographically literate. Long before the surge of K-pop acts touring arenas like Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney and Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, local cover crews were rehearsing in church halls, RSL clubs, and community centres. The accessibility of "Growl" turned it into a rite of passage for these crews, and the song remains a fixture at cover dance competitions held during events such as the Sydney K-pop Festival and Melbourne's KCON-style gatherings.
Dance studios responded to demand. Studios in Sydney's CBD, Melbourne's inner north, and Brisbane's Fortitude Valley began offering weekly K-pop choreography workshops, often using "Growl" as a foundational routine because it taught essential skills: clean lines, group synchronisation, and breath control. SBS PopAsia regularly featured EXO's dance practice clips during its run on free-to-air television, giving the routine a footprint in Australian pop culture that no previous K-pop choreography had achieved.
The choreographers behind the movement
Choreographer Rino Nakasone brought a wealth of experience from the American urban dance scene, having worked with Janet Jackson, Beyoncé, and Jennifer Lopez before transitioning into the Korean market. Her collaboration with EXO's performance director Kasper, and input from dancers including Mihawk Back and Sienna Lalau, blended Western pop precision with Korean idol discipline. The result was a routine that felt globally fluent.
This kind of multi-choreographer credit also set a new standard in K-pop itself. Before "Growl," choreography was often credited to a single in-house director, but the practice of naming a roster of choreographers alongside the performance director became more transparent after this era. Australian artists studying K-pop styles through online masterclasses often reference the "Growl" credits as an early example of how choreography authorship evolved into a recognised, named craft within the industry.
A template that still echoes on Australian stages
A decade after its release, "Growl" still shows up on setlists of K-pop cover nights in Adelaide, on TikTok feeds of teenagers in the western Sydney suburb of Mount Druitt, and in the warm-up playlists of professional dancers across the country. The ARIA Charts have slowly opened their doors to K-pop, and while "Growl" predates that mainstream arrival, its influence can be felt in how Australian audiences now evaluate a K-pop release. Choreography, once treated as a bonus, is now expected as part of the package.
For younger fans just discovering EXO through streaming platforms, the dance practice video remains a recommended starting point. Watching the members count in Korean, snap into formation, and finish with a synchronised shoulder shrug is to witness a turning point in pop performance. For long-time EXO-L, revisiting the routine is to remember a moment when the group didn't just release a song, but offered a choreography that the rest of the industry would spend the next decade trying to match.
Watch the original dance practice tonight, share it with a friend who has never seen the group perform, and step into a class at your nearest K-pop studio to feel why "Growl" still matters. The choreography belongs to anyone willing to learn the count, and every cover, whether performed in a Sydney garage or a Melbourne dance studio, keeps its legacy moving.