-TRAININGS

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Because I was considered at that time as the main dancer of the group and lead rapper, I had longer, more intense and more often dance and rapping lessons.

Even though you are the main dancer, it is not easier for you in the dance lessons. Coaches are even more mad at you, when you do mistakes or you are unable to learn moves quickly. You are considered to be the best dancer, so you must be able to show them you deserve that title or else, they will pass it on someone else. They may be too harsh on you, but it is because all eyes are on you, when the group is dancing on the stage.

As a main dancer, people should see that skills in you immediately as soon as you start dancing. You must be able to pull up great performance and show people that you are really skilled dancer every time you have to dance.

Because of my rapper position, I had many korean classes. As a rapper, you must be able to pronounce the words right (especially when you are foreigner) and I must spit many words in small period of time or be able to put emotions and energy even to the slow rapping, to make it interesting for the people.

Most people these days think that you are not good rapper unless you can rap like Eminem, but rapping is not just about being fast rapper. Sometimes it is way harder to rap slowly than spit fire around you.

I should be able to switch the languages in my rapping lines, because our songs were supposed to have some English/Japanese lines in them. I will tell you that it was really hard for me to be able to switch from one language to another and don't make it sounds awkward. I started by doing covers of slow rapping song to develop my skill of putting emotions to the each word and when time passed, I came to songs like Doom Dada (T.O.P) etc., to learn how to rap fast.

I also had vocal classes, but I had them only once/twice a week, because I wasn't vocalist, but still I attented them to fix my breathing and have the basic skills in singing.

But the classes that every trainee have are the language ones. As I said I had many Korean classes (like even three or four per one day sometimes). In those I also learnt Korean manners/culture/history because I didn't know any of these when I came to the country, which put me into lot of embarrasing situations. How I should act in presence of older or important person, table manners and so on.

Because I can speak English (sort of) and also the language from the country where I was born, I learnt Japanese as a third language, but I have never really shined in it as I had difficulties with even Korean, so I was focusing more on that than on learning Japanese.

Between those classes I had my acting classes to improve myself infront of camera not just at award shows, concerts, variety shows but also in music videos. I was and still am more of an introvert so standing in front of so many people, cameras, crew etc. was a really big problem for me and it took me a lot of courage to overcome this fear and be a little more relaxed.

There it also depends what concept you have with your group. We had one similar to the today's Blackpink/4minute - mature, kinda sexy and mysterious. Nothing like Twice or Girl's generation.

Then as the last ones there were modeling classes, where the photographer usually told you, how you should pose in front of camera to look good on photos, took a photos of you which were then used for the debut promotions. Again, these weren't that often, but still we had at least 3–5 in month.

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