Home and away: The culture curry

With an increasing number of international cultural centres and foundations coming up in recent years, audiences can look forward to a vibrant events season

New Delhi is the diplomatic capital of the country, and that is one of the reasons that make it a smorgasbord of diverse cuisine, arts, people and events. While many embassies have their cultural centres running for decades - the British Council, American Center, Goethe Institute, Russian Centre of Science and Culture, Alliance Francaise, Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, among them - some of the newer ones have been making all the noise recently.

The Korean Cultural Centre opened in December 2012 and broke all records at its third annual Korean pop (K-pop) music competition held a couple of months ago at the Siri Fort Auditorium. A motley group of 130 participants from all over the country traded K-pop songs and dance sequences, and were judged by N-Sonic, a wildly popular K-pop band. Shigorika Singh, a Delhi-based writer who was at the concert with her friends, found "the K-pop concert astonishing! There were Indians singing in Korean without ever having set foot in that country, dance troupes apeing the K-pop style. In Delhi culture circles where it's only the elite that usually go to these events, to pack Siri Fort to capacity is quite phenomenal."

This year, the Korean institution has won even more fans in India by broadcasting a popular TV drama, Dr. Hurjun ki Sachi Dastaan, on DD Bharati. Regular screenings of popular films are attracting movie lovers in droves. The centre also houses the Sejong Institute for Korean Language, the Taekwondo Academy, a cafe serving authentic Korean fare, a Korean culture experience room and, of course, a Korean karaoke machine!

Another centre equally celebrated is the five-year-old Instituto Cervantes, a centre for Spanish and Latin American culture. Every year, flamenco and tango shows are organised at the centre. The centre also focuses on visual art, including painting, photography and graffiti, theatre and film screenings. The 5th year anniversary celebrations saw a packed auditorium enjoying an Octavio Paz play performed by Cervantes' students, and a wonderful talk on writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez by a professor of Columbian literature who knew Marquez personally and offered a deeply interesting perspective into his life and works.

Earlier this year, Rahul Bhatnagar, a student of film studies at Ambedkar University, watched the finals of the UEFA Champions League between two Spanish teams, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, at a screening at Cervantes. "The atmosphere there was absolutely electric. It definitely was one of the best footballing experiences I've ever had," he says. A regular on the cultural circuit of the city, Bhatnagar also enjoys Goethe Institute's bi-annual open air film nights, an experience closest to a drive-in with food and drinks that the city has seen. "I'd say that in the last five years that I've been attending the various events that Delhi has to offer, these international cultural centres have often been in the middle of them all," he says. Most of these centres are actively seeking out their audiences via social media, and maintain constant touch with their regulars over monthly newsletters.

Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, has gained a niche following for its avant-garde sound installation events and for supporting a strong artist residency programme. The foundation aims to promote an Indo-Swiss collaboration and develop art fields that are lesser known. Its director, Chandrika Grover Ralleigh, says that innovation is very high on their agenda, we prefer not to bring 'popular' works but enjoy the challenge of new interdisciplinary collaborations. "The same artists go to multiple cities and perform with different partners each time; we rarely conduct events without participation by local artists," she says.

The Goethe Institute, or Max Mueller Bhavan as it is more popularly known, has spearheaded various projects, workshops and residencies in the fields of electronic music (Border Movement), contemporary dance (Gati Dance Forum), children's theatre, visual art (ST.Art Delhi), photography (PIX) and film (DocWok) in recent years. The Ethiopian Cultural Centre is the newest entrant on the scene, with a museum displaying artifacts and sculptures, a restaurant serving authentic Ethiopian cuisine, and a breezy cafe with the best Ethiopian coffee in the country.

Upcoming events

* Goethe Institute: Downtime, a Performapedia on Sleep that is a week-long theatrical performative quest to record, examine and unpack the phenomenon of sleep that will simultaneously invite audience participation in Delhi and in Berlin. Details on www.goethe.de

* Pro Helvetia: K TWO, a contemporary dance public intervention presented by Company Nicole Seiler, is an improvised performance where two dancers explore the limits of the movements of video game characters executed by human bodies. Details on www.prohelvetia.in

* Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre: The launch of a new book by Oxford University Press on one of India's most eminent painters, Amrita Sher-Gill: Art And Life, A Reader, edited by Yashodhara Dalmia. The book release will be followed by a presentation on the artist by a British art historian, GHR Tillotson, and a screening of Ebrahim Alkazi's rare film on Sher-Gill. Details on www.delhi.balassiintezet.hu/en/

* American Center: The Center is celebrating the LGBT Pride Month with the screening of Stonewall Uprising (2010), a documentary on the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Details on www.newdelhi.usembassy.gov/amcenterbulletin.html

* Korean Cultural Centre: A workshop on samulnori, a Korean traditional percussion by Park Euhna. Details on www. india.korean-culture.org

* British Council: A performance by Avant Garde, a London-based company led by artistic director Tony Adigun, that is pushing the boundaries of hip-hop and contemporary dance. Details on www.britishcouncil.in

* Japan Foundation: A Japanese drum performance by the Bachi Atari - Alternative Wadaiko group. Details on www.jfindia.org.in