Back to the Dot: EXO's 'EXhOrizon' Encore and Phileas Fogg's Return

A tour usually ends somewhere new. EXO's ended where it began.

In April, EXO opened their sixth solo concert tour, EXO PLANET #6 - EXhOrizon, at KSPO DOME in Seoul's Olympic Park. From November 6 to 8, they are back in the very same arena for the tour's encore, retitled EXO PLANET #6 - EXhOrizon [dot]. In between, OSEN reports, the group played 27 shows in 14 regions: Seoul and Ho Chi Minh City in April; Nagoya, Taipei, Bangkok, Macau and Osaka in May; Jakarta, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur in June; and Manila, Tokyo, Kaohsiung and Singapore in July. Sports Donga writes that every one of those shows sold out, and that the Seoul encore did too.

Stagecraft is about how a show is built. This one is built as a circle, and the most interesting design choice may be the return.

Where the circle starts

The April opening was a homecoming of its own. Dong-A Ilbo and Korea Newsroom report that the April 10 to 12 Seoul run sold every seat across three nights, including limited-view seats, and drew about 32,000 people. It was EXO's first solo concert in six years and four months. The official Weverse ticketing notice lists the five members on this tour: Suho, Chanyeol, D.O., Kai and Sehun.

The year had started in the studio. In January, OSEN reports, EXO returned as a group for the first time in about two and a half years with their eighth studio album, REVERXE. It became the group's eighth million-seller and swept five music-show wins.

The tour's name explains its brief. EXhOrizon joins "EXO" and "Horizon," and according to the concert's release materials, as carried by Dong-A Ilbo and Seoul Edit, it means that a new world begins when EXO and EXO-L, the official fan club, become one. The fans are not the audience for the concept. They are half of it.

Craft decision 1: stage the universe, not just the hits

EXO carry one of K-pop's longest-running fictional worlds. Forbes, reviewing the April show, sums it up: each member holds an elemental power, and together they protect the Tree of Life from the evil Red Force. The EXhOrizon production put that world on stage. Dong-A Ilbo lists conceptual staging built around the Tree of Life, a total eclipse, a red force and each member's superpowers.

The set pieces are specific. Korea Newsroom and Seoul Edit describe the opening "MAMA" with a battalion of cloaked figures; "EL DORADO" in front of a golden temple backdrop; "Butterfly Girl" on a flower-shaped lift with laser-mapped butterflies; "Forever" built around a crown as its central prop; "Back It Up" with 20 dancers; and "Crown," from REVERXE, closing the main set as the members climbed floating staircases.

Solo spots let each member carry a room alone. Seoul Edit notes Suho leading "Total Eclipse," Chanyeol's rap and dance break in "Gravity," Kai's "Jekyll" with choreography built around cloth dolls, Sehun's "Artificial Love," and Suho and D.O. sharing "Baby, Don't Cry."

Craft decision 2: carry it across Asia, then rebuild it

A show designed for one dome has to travel. Across the spring and summer, EXhOrizon moved through arenas from Nagoya to Singapore. When SM announced the encore in August, OSEN reported that fans would meet the tour again in "a further upgraded version." That is the honest promise of an encore: not a rerun, but the same show after months of road-testing.

The first night suggests the room felt the difference. allkpop reports that on November 6 the five members mixed songs from REVERXE with classics including "Lucky One" and "Love Me Right." D.O. became tearful on stage, and in the closing remarks Kai said the encore felt like a dream with EXO-L beside them.

Craft decision 3: open the last night to the world

The final night is the widest. Sports Donga reports that the November 7 show was streamed online through Beyond LIVE and Weverse, and that tonight's closing show, on November 8, is screened live in 757 cinemas across 23 regions, from Japan, Indonesia and Thailand to Spain, the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. The outlet says the live viewing was arranged because the Seoul encore sold out early.

So the circle closes in two ways at once. The members return to their starting arena, and the audience that followed them across Asia is invited back into the same room, on screens around the world.

ACROSS ASIA

Look at the map. All 14 of EXhOrizon's regions are in Asia, and the route reads like a tour of the continent's big rooms: Taipei and Kaohsiung, Bangkok and Macau, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Singapore, Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo. Live viewing then carried the finale to cinemas in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and beyond, according to Sports Donga. For many Asian EXO-L, the encore was not a faraway Seoul event. It was the last stop of a tour that had already come to them.

Beside Phileas Fogg: the trip that changes the clock

Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, first published in French in 1872, is the great story of a journey built to end at its starting line. Phileas Fogg wagers his friends at London's Reform Club that he can circle the globe in 80 days and walk back into the same club by 8:45 p.m. on December 21. His route crosses Asia, including Hong Kong and Yokohama.

The ending is the famous part. Fogg arrives back in London believing he is five minutes too late and has lost. Then his valet, Passepartout, discovers the date: by traveling eastward, the party had gained a day, seeing 80 sunrises while London saw 79. Fogg rushes to the club and arrives on time.

That is the shape worth setting beside EXhOrizon. The destination was the origin all along. What changed was not the room but the travelers, and the time the journey had quietly given back. We read the encore's added [dot] that way: a point on the map you return to, arriving with more than you left with. That is our reading, not an official explanation of the title.

Where the comparison stops

• Fogg's journey is a wager against the clock in a 19th-century novel. A concert tour is years of planning by large creative teams. The forms are not the same.
• Verne's hero travels with a small party of companions. EXhOrizon, by its own definition, is only complete with EXO-L in the room.
• This is an editorial comparison. We are not claiming that EXO or SM drew on Verne.

A fresh perspective: the encore as a homecoming

The easy encore is a victory lap: the same show, one more time. EXhOrizon's return is closer to Fogg's walk back into the Reform Club. The address is identical. The people coming through the door have changed.

Applause, then, for a group that came back after six years, carried a fantasy world through 27 sold-out nights, and chose to finish in the room where they began, with the doors opened, by screen, to fans across 23 regions. The horizon was the point. Coming home was the craft.

Stagecraft is CURA:TE's series on how K-pop performances are built, from set pieces to setlists.

— CURA