Dreamcatcher UAU Finishes Up Month-Long Grand America Tour Filled With Memories

Dreamcatcher subunit UAU has been on the road for almost a month now, traveling through both the United States and Latin America, bringing their debut sound and a more personal touch to their FanCon presentation. JiU, SuA, and Yoohyeon are likely headed back to South Korea as I write this, off to a well-deserved rest after fourteen cities of travel. Even with less music to perform, that's still a pretty extended stretch, but everyone who managed to attend, including me, left with lots of memories we won't soon forget.

On the other side of the world, meanwhile, the other members of Dreamcatcher made sure they're still on fans' minds, as they kept moving forward with their own activities. Here's what's gone down the last two weeks!

At home, the content has been trickling out at the Dreamcatcher official YouTube channel, and we saw UAU wrap up their "Attitude" week promotions and head to Taiwan for their first of many FanCons in the two latest Play behind-the-scenes videos. Folks who recall some of Dreamcatcher's early content are probably getting the same vibe from UAU debut videos of this nature - there's a bit more informal stuff, some randomness with game-playing, and footage from fanmeetings that play to the smaller fanbase. I know it's a running joke that UAU are rookies once again, even if long-time fans are more-than-familiar with Dreamcatcher, but the more down-to-earth approach is a nice way of re-introducing UAU's attempt to show a new side of their musical careers.

This is true even for Siyeon, because while fans are all-too-familiar with her quirky nature and randomness, she's still in all likelihood coming up to bat soon with her band in tow. The crcktkl account continued to post random images of the band and their time inside and outside the studio, including one interesting picture of Siyeon on a guitar. Beyond some of the randomness of what's out there, we aren't quite sure what to expect from Siyeon and her new crew just yet, but I feel like we're going to get close to hearing something soon as UAU heads back to take a break from their incredibly busy summer debut.

Handong's been really busy lately, and not just with going to a concert on her own for the first time and showing everyone a picture of her second cat, Gumi. She's also started her own vlog series where it looks like she'll be doing various activities around Beijing. The first episode focused in on Chinese cloisonné art, which has a long tradition and which Handong got to try for herself at a shop. One of the nice things that Handong and her team did was to add English subtitles to the Instagram version of this vlog, a realization that she has fans outside of China that would love to know what she's doing. Between this and the little teases here and there that we'll be seeing more new music from her soon, Handong has been hard at work building her brand back in China.

Speaking of brands, Dami took a small step towards putting hers together by getting onto the Bubble communication platform in order to connect more closely with fans. Dami joins fellow Dreamcatcher member Gahyun, who dropped onto the platform in early July, and her flurry of initial communications talked a bit about her music/production plans along with a nice image of herself. Like Gahyuhn, Dami's been gradually letting Dreamcatcher fans know what she's up to, and perhaps the beginning of her communications here signals that she'll be sharing more news with folks soon.

And though Gahyun's been continuing to do a lot of hanging out with friends, most notably Moon Sua from Billlie, we heard on a voice-only Bubble stream that Gahyun's started taking acting lessons, part of her way of getting on the road towards perhaps landing a future role. Like with UAU, Gahyun's feeling like she's starting over a bit, even though she's familiar with performing, and has told fans that acting is a whole different animal than singing and dancing for K-Pop work. Either way, it takes some courage to go down another path like this, especially with how competitive things are, so I'm hopeful Gahyun can leverage her network of friends and these ongoing lessons to get to being seen on screen in a different context.

Yet even as the rest of Dreamcatcher sought to go down new roads, UAU continued down theirs through the rest of Latin America and back into the United States during the second half of their tour. Once again, I really felt like the games, which directly involved a few lucky fans and some activities I didn't expect to happen, were some of the most memorable parts of the show. In my eight years of fandom following Dreamcatcher, I never thought we'd see Dreamcatcher members playing Beer Pong on stage, for example, but here we are, with hilarious results.

And it wasn't just fans who had some wild moments, but UAU themselves. JiU's after-concert live one night revealed that she was wholly unprepared for the amount of turbulence that she would experience flying through the Andes mountains, and even though everyone working the flight seemed calm and collected, it was a bit unnerving for Dreamcatcher's leader. It just goes to show that tours that go as many places as UAU's did can have more than just local food and fun fans to remember them by.

Although it was ultimately in front of smaller audiences and featured a presentation that was just as focused on fun, personal segments as it was on the music, I think it'll stick with UAU that even as a subunit of Dreamcatcher, there were enough faithful fans to come out and see them do something different and fun. For Performance Director Hwang Sooyeon, who's no stranger to touring with groups, but who'd never done so with members of Dreamcatcher, this was a tour filled with seeing and performing the work she'd worked hard with UAU to cultivate. And for the fans themselves, myself included, this tour was a way to support new endeavors by part of the group, and drop some cash into the pot for the main group to come back together again one of these days. We saw a lot of fans see the somewhat comfier and up-close-and-personal from the earlier shows and decide to purchase benefits and tickets, and while time will tell if the tour was ultimately profitable, in some ways it was just as important to have UAU carry the Dreamcatcher legacy forward and show fans it has plenty of life left yet.

What shows up after UAU's well-deserved rest is anyone's guess, but either way, you can count on me to be here to update you on the latest that comes out of Dreamcatcher-land - so for all that and more, I'll see you here next time - be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out!