Dreamcatcher Reunites Virtually With Insomnia, Draws Their Hearts Out At KCON:TACT Season 2

K-Pop Artist Stories

Dreamcatcher’s first appearance at the online version of KCON brought with it emotions, laughs, and artistic flair in more ways than one.

Like most events of its nature, KCON event organizers and the companies behind them had to scramble to adapt to a suddenly changing world, plagued by a pandemic in COVID-19 that rocked economies and brought travel and performance tours to a standstill. As someone who worked to organize, staff, and in some cases chair anime conventions for thousands of attendees for a decade, I can certainly empathize with dealing with something unprecedented that hits the core of these events — that of the interaction of artists/guests with their fans and with each other.

The emergence of the KCON:TACT events, however, has shown that at least KCON, an annual set of events celebrating all things Korean culture, is proven to be resilient. On the K-Pop level, by moving to a stage enhanced with Augmented Reality elements and focusing on online interactions and broadcasts with artists and fans, KCON:TACT has shown that even in a pandemic, K-Pop’s core identity in forging personal connections between artists and fans can still endure.

Dreamcatcher was fortunate enough to participate in Day 3 of KCON:TACT Season 2, and if you’re intrigued after reading what I’m about to recap, be sure to consider picking up a (recurring, until you cancel) KCON membership to show your support for Dreamcatcher and other artists, as well as contribute to UNESCO, a non-profit org focused on education, sciences, and culture who are looking to help educate children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But enough with some of the mild plugs and advertisement — you’re here to find out what Dreamcatcher did at KCON:TACT 2020, aren’t you?

If there was any group out there in the KCON:TACT lineup that could take advantage of an AR-enhanced stage, it’s Dreamcatcher with their dark lore storytelling and Dystopian landscape for their “Tree of Language”. As such, Dreamcatcher picked up where ATEEZ left off at the beginning of the show with “Inception” performing four of the Dystopia albums’ most iconic songs for KCON:TACT — “BOCA”, “Scream”, “Red Sun”, and “Break the Wall” — each of them taking full advantage of the stage to create four distinct settings:

As usual, Dreamcatcher set the stage figuratively aflame with their well-known sharp and aggressive choreography and vast singing talent. The images (set 1 | set 2) shown by one of the official KCON accounts showed only a fraction of the live power Dreamcatcher brought to the stage.

But of course, this wasn’t the only way Dreamcatcher took advantage of KCON:TACT’s answer to the convention programming main stage. In 2020, Dreamcatcher had yet to see their fans in groups larger than in the lucky few who did their video fansigns. With a brief sign-up period and the technology that has driven work-from-home, internet social gatherings, and more since COVID-19 hit, KCON:TACT changed all of that, allowing the live stream chat to be read and an AR-enhanced video wall of Insomnia to be seen by Dreamcatcher.

If it wasn’t obvious, Dreamcatcher clearly feels a bond with their fans, and that’s no surprise — we’re people who’ve put their support behind a group that at times has been thought of as an underdog and who has overcome adversity multiple times. There’s a great deal of gratitude, affection, and at times, awe from Dreamcatcher that they’ve come as far as they have and have garnered the growing support that they’re getting, especially in 2020. I couldn’t blame them for getting a bit emotional seeing that video wall filled with passionate fandom.

Dreamcatcher’s interactions with fans between songs didn’t disappoint, and while a bit of it was standard fare that most artists attending KCON:TACT have been doing (asking for emoji spam in the chat, polling fans for favorite songs, giving them a chance to express their support), there were, of course, a couple of uniquely Dreamcatcher moments.

…such as doing a “cute version” relay of their debut song “Chase Me”…

…and clowning their own dark nightmare concept with deliberately hammy poses depicting each member’s nightmare representation.

We were also treated to one little new change for one of Dreamcatcher’s members — main vocalist Siyeon was sporting a new tattoo, and even went so far as to remove her jacket halfway through their set to show it off.

While still unconfirmed, an Instagram post from over a month ago from the same lo-fi tattoo artist who’d done tattoos for Yoohyeon, Dami, and one other for Siyeon seems to show Siyeon’s had this one for a while. The shoulder tattoo appeared to be a play on a musical treble clef shaped with the letters “S” and “Y” — highly appropriate for the Dreamcatcher member who at times nicknames herself “Singnie”.

Siyeon, her tattoo, and the rest of Dreamcatcher would exit the stage after their set early in the day, but returned to help anchor the last of KCON:TACT day 3 with their Meet & Greet with fans, where along with host Eric Nam (who they seemed to have a really nice rapport with) they played a Pictionary-type guessing game with Insomnias.

Predictably, Dreamcatcher would select their best artist SuA and leader JiU to spearhead the drawing, while the rest of the girls would guess with the fans. What resulted was yet another fun way KCON:TACT has utilized AR in their event, and a chance for some Dreamcatcher chaos and teamwork.

The results? Well, for the most part, it went well.

I did say “for the most part”, didn’t I? At least we can say SuA didn’t have a repeat of when she and Gahyeon tried to decorate JiU’s birthday cake.

Regardless of some drawing shenanigans, Dreamcatcher’s first KCON:TACT day ended smoothly with everyone happy, especially the group themselves. In a current world where fan interaction and real-time face-to-face just isn’t quite possible just yet, this is the kind of memory that both Dreamcatcher and Insomnias will certainly keep close to their hearts for a long time to come.