Dreamcatcher Dazzles in Hong Kong As UAU Debut Month Arrives

When groups in K-Pop change around status due to non-exclusive contracts, there can be a bit of uncertainty in the air regarding what their plans are. Oftentimes it's difficult to tell when the next activity together will be. And while Dreamcatcher has some of this vagueness surrounding them, and even though no guarantees for the future can be made, there's a sense from Dreamcatcher that they intend on doing as much together as they can with as many members as they can. We saw some of that this past week as Dreamcatcher dropped into Hong Kong to do an Encore concert, so let's get right into it!

The most obvious thing regarding the group's appearance at the beginning of May was the fact that Handong was not attending. There's been a bit of speculation about this, and my take is that the company has been fairly consistent reporting on members not attending concerts, and this was a departure from that. So while it's curious they did not do so this time for Handong (most folks had to find out through communications from the promoter), I feel like since we don't know why exactly this was the case, there's a limit to the speculation or assumptions we can make. It could be as simple as Handong electing not to attend for personal reasons (her recent Instagram post on the 4th shows she was at an annual music festival running from the 2nd to the 4th of May), but in the end I'd rather respect her reasons and the company's for not being more direct here when they have been before and not worry too much about them.

That aside, as is the case when members don't attend concerts, cutouts get made by fans to be used on stage by Dreamcatcher, and this time around, someone upped their game with one of the Handong cutouts. One of them had an attached voicebox with buttons that had Handong's voice saying each of the members' names, which I think was pretty funny and ingenious.

Aside from this were some small tweaks to the setlist. "YOU AND I", for example, was a treat for fans and they immediately recognized the scarves used for the song's performance and reacted accordingly. "YOU AND I" remains in my top 5 for Dreamcatcher songs so seeing them bring it back for this encore concert was pretty nice.

There was also the addition of "Some Love", which I don't really think we've heard in quite some time live. With so many b-sides with lots of styles, songs like "Some Love" can get a bit lost in the shuffle, so having that show up in the setlist was a nice surprise as well. We don't quite know if we'll see this encore series in more than one place just yet, so to see that we can have some subtle changes to the setlist they've been performing since December's Christmas concert is nice.

A side note from this concert was the fact that not only did they celebrate JiU's birthday but like other members who've heard of them, JiU visited the birthday cafe set up in Hong Kong for the occasion. The bonus was that for the first time in ten years, JiU brought someone else from the group to go with her, so Siyeon was more than happy to show up and give the spotlight over to JiU who as always appreciated the fans' efforts. There appeared to be some funny interaction where since Siyeon tried her best to just be in the background, but the fans still wanted to give her props for coming by. I don't blame them - after all, Siyeon is Siyeon.

And there were of course plenty of "Silent Night" encore shenanigans on display, including Yoohyeon and Gahyun laughing as they took their turn and JiU using the "YOU AND I" scarf to enhance her performance. It went for sixteen-plus minutes and it seems like no matter how many of these they do they come up with new ways of playing to the crowd.

Secondary media for Hong Kong involved the usual compilation for the day-of for the concert, which included a lot of fun moments, including hilariously calling out JiU for thinking she was one pre-chorus ahead in BONVOYAGE and wondering where Yoo was for her heart. The other was a fun Tiktok and short video, Dreamcatcher's contribution to the "AiScReam" Nani Ga Suki trend from Love Live that's been going around K-Pop circles. Personally I was impressed that Dreamcatcher opted to use their own voices instead of using the original audio, even going so far as to have Siyeon dub for JiU at one point. As always, Dreamcatcher random shenanigans are welcome.

As for what Handong was doing in the meantime, I did mention before that she dropped into a recent festival in Beijing, the annual Strawberry Music Festival. Fans aren't quite sure what Handong was doing at the festival, but I think I'm going to go with the simplest explanation for now and say that she was there to just have a good time and take in some fun music. Handong's been posting occasionally from both Weibo and Instagram, both from Korea and from China, and was confirmed to have seen at least Siyeon if not everyone else. One fan saw that the organizers of the festival followed and commented on Handong's Weibo post for this event, so it seems she's been pretty busy. We have yet to hear about Handong's plans, but whatever they are, and however they relate to Dreamcatcher's group activities, are things I'll support regardless.

As for what might be the next group (or maybe Dreamcatcher UAU subunit plans), recent news shows that Dreamcatcher will be returning to the G-Kpop concert this year. They last appeared in 2023, so we'll perhaps see a short set by whoever is performing. Given the confirmation of Dreamcatcher UAU's debut in May, it's fairly viable that this may be an appearance by them to help out with promotions, but a group appearance for now doesn't appear to be out of the question. Either way, when we know more, you can expect to see more from me summarizing things, so for all that and more, I'll see you here next time - and don't forget to subscribe below if you don't want to miss anything, if you haven't already!