'KPop Demon Hunters,' 'Sinners' and more: Oscars choreographer Mandy Moore breaks down the show

NEW YORK (AP) — You know Mandy Moore's A-list choreography — from Taylor Swift’s monumental “Eras Tour” to the Oscars, where her show-defining work includes Ryan Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” in 2024 and last year's “Wicked”-ly energetic opening. At this year's Academy Awards, her goal was “to come out big again,” she told The Associated Press ahead of the ceremony. And “a big thing about these performances this year is you’re not just celebrating the songs. You’re celebrating the film.”

She did exactly that throughout the ceremony, and certainly for its two tentpole performances: Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, the voices behind the fictional girl group HUNTR/X, who performed “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” and Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq tackling “I Lied to You” from “Sinners.”

For the former, Moore served as a creative director. “It's a huge song. ‘Golden’ is huge.” she said. “There are two pieces to the performance: The first piece is a celebration of traditional Korean culture. And there is traditional drumming and singing and folk dance. And it then transitions into obviously the more kind of modern pop world of the ‘Golden’ performance.”

Preparation was extensive. “Immediately I went to the Oscars team and said, ‘I need to work with someone who is a Korean consultant and I would also love to hire this person to be in the performance.’” They landed DaEun Jung, associate professor from the University of California at Riverside, an expert in “not only the dance styles, but the wardrobe and the music and the singing,” Moore continued. “So, she has really been integral to that whole process of creating the prologue.” She also agreed to dance in the “Golden” performance.

Because “KPop Demon Hunters” is an animated film, Moore said “there's kind of no rules” in what could happen with the performance — as long as the filmmaker's tone and desires are met. And “in no way did they feel that we needed to create a live action performance of this song, to try and do it like the animation. Because you can't.”

They also didn't want the performance to only utilize “K-pop moves,” Moore said. After all, “I am not a K-pop choreographer.” It's not a K-pop concert, but rather, a performance that emphasized “creating visuals.”

However, audience members did wave golden light sticks — a common feature of K-pop concerts — and a wonderful nod to that culture.

Moore also had the idea to incorporate gold flags into the performance. “The way the flags move through the space feels, visually, like I hear the song,” she said. “It needed to be event television, in a way … Something that is so epic in nature and scale that it really transcends just somebody singing and dancing.”

Moore was a bit less involved with the “Sinners” Oscars' performance.

That's because they engaged "directly with the choreographers and the filmmakers from ‘Sinners,’” she said, led by the movie's head choreographer Aakomon “AJ” Jones. He's the man responsible for the incredible dance sequence when “I Lied To You” is performed in the movie — which speaks to why the Oscars' performance was a near-recreation of the iconic scene.

“I'm simply here as a support to Aakomon,” she said.

In addition to Caton and Saadiq, the “I Lied To You” performance featured Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith.

It's exactly “what you would want from a ‘Sinners’ performance on the Oscars,” Moore said.

“And the throughline for both performances is that they start with storytelling, first,” she said. “Its story involved with dance. It's not simply dance steps.”

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