Close to 100 young adults gather around the stage, their eyes focussed on a screen that will start playing songs any minute. This is for an ‘RPD’ — a Random Play Dance session where small parts of songs are played in quick succession, and the audience breaks into moves that match the steps in the music video.
Every time K-Wave India, Chennai’s hallyu and K-culture club organises its annual meet, an RPD is eagerly awaited, as is a K-drama and K-pop quiz, and a slew of dance and music performances.
In 2014, when Sanjay Ramjhi initiated the first meet of K-wave India, around 60 people turned up. “We initially started off as a small Asian culture club — some of us were watching K-dramas and Japanese shows as well as anime, and wanted to talk about it. However, K-culture slowly started becoming popular in 2012 and K-wave came to fruition,” he says. Their K-Fest 2023 annual meet in December last year saw around 450 participants. “We definitely would have had more people join in if we had a bigger space,” he says.
