A STAR IS BORN
UNTIL LAST YEAR, SHREYA LENKA ADMIRED KOREAN POP STARS ONLY FROM A DISTANCE. TODAY, THE 18-YEAR-OLD IS ALL SET TO DEBUT AS A K-POP IDOL HERSELF
TThis January, Shreya Lenka was just one of millions of amateur dancers around the world who liked to put up ‘dance covers’ of their favourite songs on YouTube. The 18-year-old would spend hours practising on the roof of her family home in Jharsuguda, Odisha. The roof’s white-washed walls even served as the backdrop for videos like her dance cover of ‘Close To Me’, a hit song by multicultural K-pop band Blackswan.
Eight months later, she’s gearing up to make her debut as ‘Sriya’— Blackswan’s newest member, and India’s first K-pop idol (as stars are called there). It’s taken a lot of grit, talent and hard work to get there, along with a dash of luck, but for Lenka, it all feels like a dream come true. “I can’t wait to make my debut,” she says over the phone from Seoul. “It’s a really exciting time.”
Lenka has been a dancer for as long as she can remember. She trained in Odissi for two and a half years, and has also studied hip-hop, freestyle and contemporary dance. She fell in love with K-pop a few years ago, when a friend introduced her to the music video for ‘Growl’, a 2013 hit by Korean boy-band EXO. “I really loved the way they danced and sang together, and the song was really powerful,” says Lenka, who then went online to look for more music by EXO and other K-pop artists. “Then, four years ago, I also found [K-pop band] Stray Kids and got into them a lot.”
Lenka wouldn’t be the first Indian to aspire to K-pop stardom. Hundreds of teams take part in the Korean Culture Centre’s annual K-pop contest, hoping to get a chance to represent India at the K-Pop World Festival in South Korea. But in Lenka’s case, her obsession with K-pop coincided with two essential factors. First, the industry was actively looking for non-Korean faces in an effort to diversify and establish a more permanent foothold in the global pop market. The second factor was the pandemic, which forced K-pop auditions online and opened them up for applicants not in Korea or the traditional recruiting grounds of the US and Southeast Asia. Lenka started sending out tapes to any auditions she could find. One went to Cygnus, a project by Blackswan label DR Music that aims to discover fresh K-pop talent. Of the 4,000 applicants, Lenka and Brazilian artist Gabriella Darcin (Gabi) were invited to Seoul, where they were put through a rigorous month-long training regimen that included 12-hour days of dance and singing practice, fitness sessions and Korean lessons. “It was hard, the workouts were difficult, the live-singing was difficult,” says Lenka. “But the people here are so nice and kind, everyone helped me to improve. I got to learn new things—I’m still experiencing new things—and I love that.” Back in Seoul now after a short stint at home in Odisha, Lenka is all set to drop her first music video with her new bandmates in Blackswan soon, cementing her status as a bona fide K-pop idol. She can’t wait. “I’m looking forward to writing and producing more songs, my own songs,” she says, stumbling over the words in excitement. “And meeting and collaborating with idols. Oh, and I almost forgot, there’s the world tour. And maybe one day I can go back to India and do a Bharatanatyam performance, because it was my favourite. There’re a lot of things I’m excited to do!” ■
INVITED TO SEOUL, LENKA AND BRAZILIAN ARTIST GABI WERE PUT THROUGH A RIGOROUS MONTHLONG TRAINING REGIMEN