EXO-M "How To": Xiumin Makeup Tutorial

My best friend Charlie is a professional makeup artist and has his own channel on YouTube. Recently he completed a look shown by EXO-M member Xiumin, in their debut video for "Mama".

If you want to create the look yourself or just want to see how it's done, watch the video below!

EXO - Angel (Into Your World) Dance - MIRRORED

I was very fortunate to see EXO-K live in London at the Indigo2 arena, on June 23rd 2012. This is the first time they performed Angel and I managed to capture the whole dance.

If you wish to learn it, here is my mirrored video. Hope you enjoy.

LoKo Workshop: Big Bang Special!

The London KPop Dance Workshop Team, better known as the LoKos, have just this minute released details of their next exciting workshop, and for all you VIPs out there this is a great one for you…it’s a 7 hour workshop full of 4 Big Bang dances. Wow, fantastic baby!

TVXQ "Keep Your Head Down" Album Review

Who would have believed that the Keep Your Head Down album by TVXQ has already been out for a full year?

It was thanks to TVXQ for getting me into K-pop actually, so yes, I was a Cassie first before anything else and still regard TVXQ as my favourite group, whether they are a 5 or a 2. Naturally, like every other Cassie on the planet, when I heard the news of their split I was also left heartbroken...I knew my chances of seeing them live was slim anyway but now I wouldn't be able to follow them and get excited with new releases. "Bummed" doesn't quite describe it.

Fast forward a few years and - lo and behold - what is this? The remaining members of TVXQ - screaming champion Changmin and dance expert Yunho - decided to still go ahead! Of course it was sad that it wasn't all 5 members, but I personally was quite grateful that they wanted to keep the name alive and followed their footsteps when their new releases came. My dream finally came true and actually, I saw them both live last year at the SMTown Paris concert. With the growing popularity of K-pop in the UK, who knows? Maybe I could even see them in my home country soon!

So, it seems fitting that I review their latest album "Keep Your Head Down" shortly after their year's anniversary. To read my review, just carry on reading!

KPop Dance Workshop Review - Kpop Hits 2011

2011 has been an incredible year for KPop activities. SMTown in Paris, working on the London MBC Auditions, being interviewed by KBS and SBS, starting our own KPop Dance Workshops and hosting a masterclass with an SM Entertainment choreographer as the teacher with coverage by YTN...I just want to say I am thankful to each and every one of you who have made these memories even more precious to me. I've had such a fantastic year (we'll ignore the painful beginning) and I couldn't be happier that I've been surrounded by such lovely people throughout it all - I'm very grateful to have your friendships and I hope that, together, we can do much more next year!

Swiftly moving on from that soppy beginning, we hosted our last KPop Dance Workshop for 2011. The theme for this one was - quite fittingly - KPop Hits of 2011 so we asked our fans on Facebook to choose songs to learn the dances from that were released this year. We decided to choose a staggering 9 songs out of what people had chosen (we usually only teach 3!) and rehearsals began.

It's been terribly busy. I recently started a Christmas temp job so on my "days off" I've been getting the train to London to rehearse the dances with my fellow LoKos. I've barely had any rest and am so happy it's Christmas Day tomorrow! But yes - during the run up to the workshop I literally used up all my time for work or dance rehearsals and it was the same for the other members. We're utterly exhausted, so I hope everyone appreciates and understands how much work we put in to our dance lessons for you guys!

I was so surprised to see so many people turn up to our workshop. Usually we only have between 8-11 people but this time we had an amazing - I think - 23 people! Ranging from 14 to their early 30's. Incredible! Our profile really shot up since we started promoting the Baek Koo Young workshop but I don't think I really expected our normal workshops to become that popular. Thank you so much to everyone who turned up! I couldn't help but be surprised at every member that turned up at the tube station. And on a dark, freezing cold Sunday morning as well! Bloody troopers, I tell ya!!

I also met the lovely girls behind the blog "Korean Class Massive" because they came to review our workshop. To see their blog post on the workshop click HERE, and to read their blog post on us LoKos, click HERE. I assure you it's worth a read!

The dances we taught in order were Super Junior's "Mr. Simple", Rania's "Dr Feel Good", 2NE1's "I Am The Best", Beast's "Fiction", U-Kiss "Neverland", f(x) "Hot Summer", T-ara's "Cry Cry", Girls' Generation "The Boys" and last but not least, Infinite's "Paradise". I taught Mr. Simple and Hot Summer.

After a thorough and much needed warm up (yeah, I know my warm up's are pretty military. And yes Tammy I'm sure you did do the warm up in the common room!! I know your game...) I started to teach Mr. Simple. Hmm - after watching a couple of videos I'm sure I taught the sides wrong. But it's okay guys!! The moves are the same, but if I taught you on the right then you just move to the left, and the left side just move to the right! Simple! Bwara Mr. Simple, Simple...

Yeah. Anyway. All of our students worked really hard through every set. As it was our biggest class yet in such a small room, it was definitely a challenge to teach everyone so we tried to rotate the lines as much as we could so everyone had a chance to see the teachers. It doesn't help when the teachers are small! But if our workshops are going to continue to be over 20 people then we need to find a bigger studio to accommodate everyone. Thanks for your support everyone!

With 9 dances to learn, it was probably our most exhausting workshop yet and as the day got dark very quickly it felt like we were there longer than the time we actually were. But I really hope everyone had fun and I hope to see some of your faces at our future workshops!! When one ends, another one gets planned ... we're already trying to figure out a good date!

Here are some pictures and a video. To view more, please check out Korean Class Massive's blog.

Thanks again everyone! Have a good Christmas and have a brilliant New Year! See you in 2012 ;-)

Caroline and the LoKos xo

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Wonder Girls' "Be My Baby" Contest!

For those not in the know, KPop group "Wonder Girls" are holding a dance contest! All you have to do is learn the dance, do a video and send it in! The prize? Oh, only winning a flight + accommodation to Korea for 4 days, no big deal...right?!

Well. I'm part of a UK Kpop dance group called LoKos, and we are the people behind the KPop dance workshops in London plus the SM Entertainment choreographer's workshop event. It's a fantastic prize so we learned the dance and shot the video - we've now sent it in so fingers crossed!

We danced on the rooftop of a hotel late at night - it was just 2degrees and in the clothes we were wearing it's safe to say that we were bloody freezing! Still, we were determined to perform as best as we could in the conditions we had to deal with and we tried to pump each other up.

I would like to thank Gavin for filming our video and for taking the time to actually film it for us, and thank you to Deanna for teaching it to us! And a massive thank you to Tammy for editing it so quickly.

This is our video, I hope you like it! Please share, rate and comment!

If you wish to know more about the contest, click HERE.

The LOKOs.
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SHINee at London Leicester Square Odeon

I've been listening to KPop since 2008. My first SHINee song blasted through my ears in 2009 with "Ring Ding Dong". If you told me that in 2011 I'd see them three times in one year, I'd have laughed in your face and probably tell you to go do one.

But, it happened.

First off was the incredibly amazing SMTown concert in Paris on June 11th, and then SHINee at Abbey Road Studios June 19th. In fact, my videos of SHINee at Abbey Road are still growing by the day and so far I have over 75,000 views altogether.

Then...SHINee came to London to perform for the London Korean Film Festival. The news only came about a week before the concert was due to happen so it sent everyone in the UK into a huge frenzy. Such a huge frenzy in fact, that Shawols crashed the Odeon server and was down for hours, making the SHINee concert more popular than ticket sales for Harry Potter, Odeon said.
And why wouldn't it be more popular? With under 900 seats available, this would make one hell of an intimate concert, practically a once in a lifetime opportunity to see them so close. And my God was I astounded that my friends managed to nab us tickets in Row C!!

The concert started at 4:30pm which is like, the best concert time ever. No super late night with problems with public transport!! I was pleased that they'd perform for an hour...but in all honesty that hour flew by far too quickly and barely felt like it was five minutes.

As we entered the Odeon the atmosphere was buzzing with hundreds of Shawols already starting to fangirl. The auditorium was amazing - the stage was so friggin' CLOSE. I felt so lucky to not only be in the same room, but to be so near as well. And for the third time!!

SHINee came on stage to the sound of deafening screams. And who can blame these girls and boys? They've waited a long time for a Korean concert to happen and lo and behold - we finally got one. SHINee are the first Korean popstars to perform in the UK.

They started off with Ring Ding Dong. I think they may have been a bit nervous during the first couple of numbers because their personalities didn't really come out on stage until they performed their solos. I took several videos of the concert - the best ones being their solos because they all stood still (minus Key) and I got tons of beautiful close ups.
My favourite performances were Jonghyun and Taemin. Jonghyun has a gorgeous voice, and that smile and twinkling eyes of his...wow. You can tell he just loves being on stage. And those high notes! Sublime! He hits notes higher than me and I'm a girl...
But Taemin really surprised me. I always just considered him as the dancer of the group and not much of a singer because he never gets many solos. But whoa. Boy can sing and he can sing good. But he's also transitioning between boy and man...he's really starting to grow up and he's becoming less "cute boy next door" and more like "handsome young man."

Here are my videos.

Ring Ding Dong

Onew Solo

Jonghyun Solo

Key Solo

Minho Solo

Taemin Solo

SHINee Interview

"Hello"