South Korean pop band Blackswan has added Odisha’s Shreya Lenka – aka Shreya – as one of the two new members of the group after a global audition.
South Korean pop band Blackswan has added Odisha’s Shreya Lenka – aka Shreya – as one of the two new members of the group after a global audition.
Shreya Lenka, an 18-year-old girl from Rourkela, Odisha, has been chosen as the fifth member of South Korean pop band Blackswan.
Lenka, who goes by the stage name Shriya, will join the original members of the girl group—Yanghun, Fatou, Judy and Leia—as well as Brazil’s Gabriela Dalsin (Gabby) as the sixth member.
Record label DR Music welcomed Sriya and Gabi on board in an Instagram post.
“With their debut, we will be back with the new BlackSwan,” read the post along with photos of the new members.
Global Auditions
Shriya and Gabby were selected for the band after participating in a six-month-long global audition, which was announced by DR Music last year after Haime left the girl group.
Philip YJ Yoon, director of DR Music Entertainment Korea, said that Shriya and Gabby worked well together during the audition process.
Mr. Yoon said, “He showed us the positive energy needed to be together and complete each task. This was one of the reasons we decided not to separate him,” Mr. Yoon said. PTI in an email conversation.
As part of the training that began in December, the two actors were to work on their Korean language, dancing and singing skills.
“The two will now begin preparing for their new album and stage performance,” Mr. Yoon said.
Shriya’s entry in K-pop
A trained dancer, Shriya was introduced to K-pop by a friend a few years back. She found the choreography in the music video very appealing and became attached to its “unique style” of singing and dancing.
Boy band Exo was the teenager’s introduction to the world of K-pop and later fell in love with songs from BTS, Stray Kids and The Boys. In 2020, she saw K-pop record labels open online auditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to give it a shot.
When Shriya’s family found out that she was applying for a K-pop audition, her grandmother introduced her to a classical music teacher. His short stint in learning Odissi helped him to improvise in subtle nuances.