Precarious utopia: The affective politics of transcultural entertainment in K-pop Random Play Dance

Abstract

K-pop Random Play Dance (RPD) has emerged as a global fan practice that transforms public spaces into sites of participatory performance and community-building. This research examines K-pop RPD as a precarious utopian space, where global pop culture is reinterpreted within local contexts to produce fleeting yet affectively powerful moments of joy, collectively, and self-expression. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews across mainland China, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Melbourne, our study explores how RPD participants navigate capitalist infrastructures, state regulation, and gendered surveillance while reclaiming space through dance, demonstrating how public performance can be both vulnerable and deeply empowering, especially in heavily policed social environments. By extending Richard Dyer's framework of utopian sensibility, our study introduces transculturality as a key utopian solution in global fan practices to explore how young adults understand cultural belonging and negotiate risks within transcultural media consumption.

Introduction

In the center of a bustling shopping mall, a crowd of stylish young people begins to gather in a loose square in front of a small stage. LED screens at the back display the words “K-pop Random Play Dance” in bold, neon colors. While they wait, some adjust their outfits, others practice moves, preparing for what will come. Very soon, an announcement rings out with a female mechanical voice counting down: Five, four, three, two, one—the beat of a K-pop song immediately fills the air. Those standing aside who recognize the song rush forward, effortlessly moving in sync with the beat, imitating the precise choreography of K-pop idols.

This is a typical scene at a K-pop Random Play Dance (RPD) event, which one can easily find on weekends in most major cities worldwide or on social media. The earliest media example of RPD we found was on the Korean TV show Weekly Idol in December 2011 (DausSH, 2012), where a girl group was asked to dance to a mix of their songs’ highlights stitched together. The game quickly gained popularity, and by the early 2010s, it became a favorable activity among fans. Over the years, its appeal expanded globally, drawing fans worldwide to public spaces such as shopping malls, parks, and plazas for shared fun. Whether in Shanghai, Los Angeles, or Paris, the format is similar: a circle formed in the open space, a random selection of K-pop songs’ highlights, and well-dressed fans who perform energetic choreography. The vibe is palpable: for a brief moment, participants become part of something larger—a transcultural, ephemeral community united by their love for K-pop.

Over the past summers, we conducted ethnographic fieldwork at RPD events across cities in China, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Los Angeles. In the course of this research, we interviewed 40 participants and gained deep insights into how fans from various cultural backgrounds interpret and engage with K-pop through these public performances. While the structure of the events is largely consistent, the significance of these gatherings varies depending on the local context. In China, where we conducted the majority of our research, although the events are promoted among fans for pleasure, they feel more politically charged, characterized by young participants’ subtle but powerful statements of individuality that might not fit neatly within the societal norms, whether in terms of gender presentation, fashion, or even just the choice to participate in a non-local cultural phenomenon.

K-pop RPD is a fascinating site for exploring how global pop culture intersects with local contexts, creating what we describe as a “precarious utopia”—a temporary site where pleasure can be felt through dance and collective participation. Building on Dyer's (2005) concept of “utopian sensibility,” we argue that RPD offers an ephemeral, affective escape from the mundane realities of everyday life. In these moments, fans experience excitement, build connections, and find a sense of belonging in a community that shares the same cultural language. However, the utopian nature of this space is inherently fleeting, subject to external regulating forces. It is not a fully realized utopia but rather constrained by the very structure that allows it to exist. RPD exists as a contradictory site—deeply tied to global capitalist entertainment systems while simultaneously shaped by additional layers of precarity beyond capitalism, which includes state regulation and sociocultural pressure, particularly in conservative cultural contexts. By extending Dyer's framework, we explore how the utopian sensibility created by K-pop RPD in more restrictive environments can be more vulnerable yet, at the same time, more empowering.

Reframing entertainment as utopian sensibility

Despite often being dismissed as superficial or purely escapist, Richard Dyer saw entertainment as something profoundly different. In his article “Entertainment and Utopia,” Dyer (2005) argued that entertainment is not just a distraction from the ordinary but a way of imagining how the world could feel better. He conceptualized this as utopian sensibility, explaining how entertainment can address societal tensions by evoking feelings of energy, abundance, intensity, transparency, and community. Dyer identified these five emotional responses as affective solutions to real social needs, such as alienation, scarcity, monotony, and fragmentation of modern life. Energy conveys the exhilaration often missing from the routines of daily labor, while abundance imagines a world of fullness that counters the pervasive experience of scarcity. Intensity offers unfiltered emotional engagement, and community allows for a sense of belonging in isolation. Dyer emphasized that entertainment's utopian potential lies not in presenting fully realized alternatives but in offering glimpses of “what utopian might feel like” (Dyer, 2005: 20). These moments are conveyed through sensory and emotional engagement—vivid music, movement, and rhythm—that resonate directly with audiences. The ability of entertainment to evoke the texture of utopia reveals what people long for and value and makes visible both the inadequacies of the present and the possibilities of an alternative future.

In Dyer's framework, non-representational elements play an important role in creating utopian sensibility. While representational elements like narratives, characters, and dialogue may depict utopian ideals, Dyer (2005) emphasized that the emotional power of entertainment often lies in sensory and affective experiences. Non-representational signs—such as “color, texture, movement, rhythm, melody, camerawork” (Dyer, 2005: 20)—engage audiences on a more embodied level, evoking feelings directly rather than through explicit storytelling. This emphasis on affect aligns with broader scholarly perspectives that view music and performance as practices deeply rooted in bodily and emotional experiences. Wood (2012) highlighted how non-representational thinking encourages active engagement with practices as they are performed, shifting the focus from abstract representations to the lived, sensory aspects of entertainment as they unfold in specific temporal and spatial contexts. Similarly, Kim (2023) noted how coordinated non-representational forms, such as sounds and body movements, can create shared experiences that participants find meaningful through embodied interaction rather than representational semantics. Martí (2019: 159) further connected non-representational theories to the posthumanist view of music, suggesting that music should be approached as something that is “felt and lived”. Music is not separate from the body but deeply integrated with it, creating relational experiences that are felt through the body's own sensations and connections (Dewsbury, 2010: 325).

However, this utopian sensibility is not without constraints, as debated with a specific entertainment form: disco. Critics in the 1970s saw disco as nothing more than glossy, commercialized pop that lacked overt political messaging and seemed to symbolize everything wrong with mass culture. While acknowledging that disco operates within the structures of capitalism shaped by profit motives, Dyer argued that this does not fully undermine its potential. Capitalism constructs the disco experience, but “it does not necessarily know what it is doing, apart from making money” (Dyer, 2005: 153). Disco's contradictions—its existence as a commodified cultural product and its ability to offer joy, collectivity, and liberation—make it far more complex and significant than its critics allowed. Unlike the phallic energy of rock, disco embraces fluid, embodied pleasure. It offers an alternative to rigid, heterosexual culture through its celebration of whole-body eroticism, romanticism, and materialism. For Dyer (2005), these features illustrate how entertainment can subvert its capitalist constraints, repurposed to hold open “the gap between what is and what could or should be” (158). Dyer noted that disco is particularly important for “gay and women's groups” (158), highlighting how these entertainment spaces provide an affective basis for a form of utopian politics that “was better suited to the life worlds of marginalized communities” (Garcia, 2014: 1).

Realizing utopian sensibility in global entertainment industry

As Dyer (2005) argued, entertainment exists within the constraints of capitalism while simultaneously offering moments of utopian escape. K-pop also exemplifies this duality, operating within highly commodified structures yet creating meaningful connections for its audiences. Driven by major entertainment companies such as SM and HYBE, K-pop has expanded far beyond South Korea over the past decades and developed into a multi-billion-dollar industry with fans spanning every continent (Cho et al., 2023). Idols undergo years of rigorous training in singing, dancing, and performance before they emerge as polished figures of global stardom (Kim, 2020). Digital media platforms have also facilitated its wider reach, delivering everything from live performances to merch sales (Jung, 2015). K-pop's success is also attributed to state-led initiatives, as the South Korean government has actively promoted the Korean Wave as a cultural export during the country's economic modernization, using K-pop to enhance national soft power (Kim, 2017). However, this global success has not been without criticism. At its core, K-pop is still a highly commodified industry, with idols marketed as products under the patriarchal gaze (Kim, 2020) and fans positioned as excessive consumers in a tightly controlled ecosystem (Ardhiyansyah et al., 2021). These practices have revealed the exploitative nature of the industry, which still prioritizes profit over the well-being and autonomy of its participants.

Nevertheless, the commodified underpinning cannot deny K-pop's ability to evoke joy and connections. Much like disco, K-pop also embodies affective qualities that offer fleeting moments of what Dyer termed as utopian sensibility. This is achieved not through demands for structural transformation but through its capacity to create a sense of emotional solidarity and shared cultural imagination. As exemplified across various national contexts, K-pop allows for transcultural connections where fans from diverse cultural backgrounds engage in shared admiration and participatory practices, temporarily dissolving boundaries of language and geography (Ferguson and Thanyodom, 2024; Min et al., 2019). In her ethnographic work in Cuba, Humphreys (2021) showed how Cuban youth turned to K-pop to reimagine the self, sociality, and Cuba's place in the world. While falling short of achieving meaningful change, K-pop holds out “a utopian dimension, offering up experiences of pleasure and self-fulfillment through solidarity that may yet be mobilized into more liberating form” (Humphreys, 2021: 1024). Additionally, in line with Dyer's focus on gender and sexual minorities, utopian sensibility enabled by K-pop can be particularly meaningful for women and queer fans. In recent years, female idols have been increasingly challenging the patriarchal norms through empowering archetypes like the “ssen-unni” (stronger sister) (Lee and Yi, 2020) and non-traditional “tomboy” gender expressions (Laforgia and Howard, 2017). The androgynous performances and thought-provoking themes featured in K-pop production further contribute to broadening understandings of femininity and strength, while encouraging fans to question and expand beyond heteronormative ideologies (Baudinette and Scholes, 2025).

The power of entertainment, as Dyer argued, lies precisely in the ability to evoke what utopia feels like through affective and sensory experiences. Non-representational elements in K-pop, such as soundscapes, choreography, and visual aesthetics that engage fans on an embodied level, constitute its utopian sensibility. According to Kim and Kwon (2022), sonic innovations are critical to K-pop's global success, blending various genres to create an ever-evolving, hybridized soundscape, all of which heighten emotional engagement. Along with the musicality, this sensorial utopianism extends beyond passive listening to more embodied participation. For instance, Girls’ Generation's debut song, “Into the New World,” combined uplifting melodies with visuals of highly synchronized dance routines, generating feelings of energy, hope, and togetherness (Kim, 2019). The emphasis on synchronization is a key feature of K-pop performances. For fans engaged in K-pop dances, synchronous movement in dance can enhance group affiliation, cooperation, and shared pleasure across cultures, especially in East Asian contexts (Monroy et al., 2022). Notably, K-pop dance performances also enable marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ+ Asian American communities, to construct alternative narratives of identity and belonging, pushing back against mainstream stereotypes and negative representations (Kuo et al., 2022). As an extended example of participatory dance practices emphasizing synchronization, K-pop RPD carves out a space where fans can momentarily fully emerge with the affective and sensory pleasure in a communal utopia.

Methods: Interviews and ethnography

The study employs multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995) and semi-structured interviews (Galletta, 2013). In 2023 and 2024, we conducted ethnographic fieldwork at 20 RPD events across multiple cities in mainland China (Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai, Nanjing, Zhongshan, Shenzhen, Beijing), Hong Kong, the United States (Los Angeles), and Australia (Melbourne). The multi-sited ethnography allows the examination of complex and interconnected cultural phenomena in worldwide practices (Marcus, 1995). It offers insights into how global popular culture, like K-pop, is interpreted, embodied, and transformed across diverse cultural contexts by local communities. For interviews, we recruited participants by directly reaching out to people during our fieldwork and through social media platforms (Instagram, Discord, WeChat, and RedNote). The recruitment incorporated two complementary sampling methods: snowball sampling and maximum variation sampling. As a non-probability approach, snowball sampling facilitates access to the existing social networks within hidden subcultural communities (Ellard-Gray et al., 2015). Concurrently, maximum variation sampling captures diverse perspectives that were not previously documented in existing research (Price, 2024) to reveal the multiplicity of RPD events.

This study comprised 40 interviews, of which 36 were conducted in person and four online. Participants represent diverse cultural backgrounds and geographical locations across mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States, and Australia. The interviews mostly took place in the same locations where ethnographic fieldwork was conducted, covering major urban centers in these regions. Participants were young adults between 18 and 27 years old, with an average age of 21. The gender composition consisted of 33 female and 7 male participants, with educational backgrounds ranging from vocational high school to master's degrees. Their dance experience varied considerably, including amateur enthusiasts, trained dancers, and former idols, while their roles in events ranged from general participants to organizational roles. All participants provided informed consent before their interviews. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was conducted to analyze the interview data, as it allows for a flexible yet systematic approach to identifying recurring themes and variations in participants’ experiences of RPD events across cultural contexts. The process involved iterative coding, categorizing key themes, and refining them through comparative analysis to ensure coherence and depth.

K-pop RPD as a utopian sensibility space

Energy, intensity, and community in RPD

As Dyer (2005) wrote, entertainment provides glimpses of a better world not by offering blueprints of utopia but by generating feelings of energy, intensity, abundance, transparency, and community to imagine a more abundant and alive reality. As a participatory space, RPD is an experience that brings these ideas to life. For the duration of a song, a mall ceases to be pure commerce but instead turns into a stage. Strangers momentarily form a community; movements replace isolation. Lots of our respondents described RDP as their “reset button,” as Mengmeng from Hangzhou reflected:

After a long week of work and stress, this is the only time I would truly feel free. RPD events are loud and chaotic in a good way. Full of life. It is not just dancing. It is an escape.

Her words echo Dyer's claim that entertainment provides an alternative to scarcity. For RPD participants, scarcity is not merely material but emotional and social. Many young adults we interviewed live with predictable schedules, loneliness, and a lack of spontaneous joy in routine life, offering few spaces where one can be expressive without fear of judgment. RPD, in contrast, is an overflow of sound, movement, joy, and connection. This abundance directly fuels the energy that grounds RPD. Lots of our participants describe the rush of immediate physical engagement, where hesitation is replaced by instinctive movement. As Tina from Guangzhou recalled:

The moment a song I know comes on, my body immediately moves. I don’t even have to think about it. I feel it.

As Dyer (2005) highlighted, utopia is not experienced through thought alone but bodily immersion. Unlike watching K-pop performances on a screen, participating in RPD requires physical presence and spontaneous action. The demand for quick recognition of songs and recall of choreography heightens the adrenaline rush that makes RPD feel incredibly exhilarating. Closely related to this is intensity, the affective depth of the experience. Unlike concerts, where fans watch idols from a distance, RPD blurs the boundaries between performers and spectators. Lanqi from Beijing described how stepping into the dance space transformed her self-perception:

When I’m part of the dance circle, I feel like I’m performing on a public stage, even though no one is really watching me. There's a rush to it—like being fully alive, even if only for a few seconds.

Her experience speaks to how the visibility of participants in RPD is paradoxical. On the one hand, it almost feels like an anonymous collective act where individuals dissolve into the larger crowd. Yet, in those few moments inside the circle, each dancer is thrust into the spotlight, becoming momentarily distinct and hyper-visible. The seamless transformation—from blending into the collective to standing out as an individual—reveals how utopian entertainment heightens emotional engagement, intensifying both the shared and personal experience of performance.

The utopian potential of RPD also lies in its ability to bring strangers together in ways rarely seen in everyday life. Unlike other formal dance performances, RPD requires no auditions, no excessive branding, and no institutional gatekeeping. The only rule is simple: if you know the choreography, you can join. As Kiki from Shenzhen said:

I don’t really know most of the people I dance with, but in that moment, it's like we understand each other completely. We are all just there, moving to the same rhythm and collaborating on the routines.

What matters is not who you are but the shared affective investment in K-pop. The kind of egalitarianism created through direct, unmediated human connection constructs a bond beyond personal familiarity and social hierarchies. Community, perhaps the most defining aspect of RPD, is built in the moment. Unlike online fandom spaces featuring long-term interaction, RPD is ephemeral by design. As CC, a Hong Kong participant, described beautifully:

Even if I go alone, I always end up recognizing people. There's always someone I’ve danced with before, and even if we don’t talk, there is this mutual understanding—we just dance, we have fun.

This fleeting yet deeply felt sense of belonging aligns with Dyer's argument that utopian feelings do not require permanence to be meaningful. The joy of RPD lies precisely in its impermanence—each event is a one-time gathering of people, music, and space. And yet, for those few minutes, it forms a community, a world itself.

Transculturality as a utopian solution

For Dyer, entertainment offers utopian solutions to the deficiencies of social life, addressing scarcity, exhaustion, and social isolation. Yet, in an increasingly globalized yet fragmented world, other tensions persist—alienation, otherness, and xenophobia (Baudinette, 2021; Cicchelli et al., 2023). Despite hyper-connectivity through digital media and global consumer culture, many individuals experience cultural displacement and seek the possibility of negotiating multiple belongings (Ponzanesi, 2020). These tensions are not merely the result of economic precarity or political instability but stem from the fluid and often unstable nature of identity in transnational spaces.

In this context, RPD emerges as an affective and accessible site where cultural hybridity is not just acknowledged but actively performed and appreciated. Just as abundance counters scarcity or energy counters exhaustion, we propose that transculturality can be understood as another utopian solution, one that addresses the sense of un-belonging produced by cultural hybridity and migration. We approach transculturality at a micro level, viewing it as an individual sense of belonging rooted not in nationality but in shared cultural identity-forming (Welsch, 1999: 198). In cities shaped by diasporic populations, individuals often find themselves caught between multiple cultural affiliations—never fully belonging to their country of origin, nor completely assimilated into their host country (Clifford, 1994). Bobbi, an undergraduate student in Los Angeles, described how participating in RPD on campus and in the broader LA area made him feel part of a global movement rather than just a localized fan:

It was so wild because I’ve danced with people from Korea, Mexico, China, and the Philippines, all at the same event. No one cares where you are from. The second the song plays, it's just … instinct. We just move.

RPD operates beyond ethnic, national, or linguistic differences, serving as a meeting point where bodily knowledge is most valued for participation rather than cultural backgrounds. Unlike fan spaces that rely on textual discourses, RPD features a non-representational affective space where transcultural connection is felt through movement rather than mediated through languages. This quality makes RPD especially important in multiracial cities like Los Angeles and Sydney, where cultural blending is a lived reality, yet social and racial divisions persist.

Helen, an international student in Adelaide, similarly described the contrast between the more structured dance experience in Singapore and the community-driven nature of RPD in Australia:

In Singapore, it felt more like something you must be good at. It's very technique-focused. There were auditions and formal crews. But after I moved to Australia, I saw RPD in parks and malls. You don’t have to be in a crew; you just have to love the music. In those moments, we were all just K-pop fans, not Singaporean, Australian, or international students—just people who danced.

Instead of reinforcing homogeneous cultural identities, RPD enables a fluid, situational sense of belonging, an alternative to exclusionary national or institutional affiliations. This is particularly meaningful for international students, second-generation migrants, and diasporic individuals, who often struggle with binary identity categories. In RPD, such distinctions become irrelevant, as the space is defined by embodied participation rather than identity markers. For Lucas, who moved from China to Sydney, RPD provided an immediate sense of home in an unfamiliar environment:

Moved here from China, at first felt super out of place. But then I joined an RPD in Darling Harbor, and suddenly, it didn’t matter that my English wasn’t perfect. The music, the moves—those were the only things that mattered. It made me feel at home in a city that still felt foreign.

His experience highlights the utopian dimension of transculturality—within RPD, the anxieties of being a cultural outsider momentarily dissolve. This embodied transculturality also shapes RPD's evolving musical and choreographic landscape. While initially centered on K-pop, many RPD events now incorporate J-pop, C-pop, and even viral TikTok dances, reflecting the increasing hybridity of global pop culture. Chrissie from Sydney observed this shift:

RPD is like a reflection of how globalized the world is. Even if I don’t know the song, I still recognize the moves, and that's enough to join.

Through shared bodily movements, RPD constructs a transcultural mode of belonging that is fluid, inclusive, and participatory. Rather than positioning individuals as passive consumers of global culture, RPD invites them to actively shape its creation. Transculturality temporarily alleviates the alienation and exclusion produced by globalization, fostering an ephemeral yet powerful utopian sensibility beyond national and linguistic boundaries.

Utopia in-between: Constraints in RPD

Utopian possibilities within the capitalist structure

While RPD offers a space for connection and collective joy, it also operates within a profit-driven framework that determines its existence. As the commercialization of these events continues to grow, the organizers we interviewed acknowledged the pressures of navigating consumerism and corporate sponsorship, which often dictate the visibility and structure of the events. These commercial constraints are particularly felt when RPD events are held in shopping malls and increasingly mediated by social media platforms that prioritize viral content. Ze, one of the earliest organizers in Nanjing, emphasized that the reliance on malls as venues has become the primary model sustaining RPD in China:

You basically have to cooperate with a shopping mall. The mall will give you some money, and we have to ensure enough traffic. To put it bluntly, we have to prove that RPD can drive consumption. The mall is not a philanthropist, and they can’t give you a venue for free.

This “traffic,” as he referred to it, includes both in-person participation and online engagement, such as the views generated by videos posted after the event. As RPD becomes digitized, organizers find themselves continuously adjusting event structures to cater to platform-specific visibility metrics. Erwen, one of China's leading RPD organizers from Guangzhou, reflected on this delicate balance between commercial necessity and creative autonomy:

To be honest, RPD is already a business. As organizers, we must consider the traffic needs of the shopping malls, but we don’t want it to become too mechanical. When we host events, I will deliberately choose some unpopular K-pop songs to give people a little surprise, but not too many; otherwise, the mall will be dissatisfied.

This commodification does not entirely negate the utopian potential of RPD. Rather, it highlights the precarious nature of these gatherings, existing at the intersection of precarity—the structural vulnerability shaped by global capitalism, and precariousness—the embodied vulnerability of participants who, while enjoying RPD, must also contend with the commercial forces that shape these spaces. As Han (2018) explains, precarity is the structural condition of instability, outlining the condition of “those who live at the juncture of unstable contract labor and a loss of state provisioning” (332). Precariousness, on the other hand, is more affective, tied to “the ontological condition of exposure and interdependency” (Han, 2018: 332). In the context of RPD, precarity manifests in the external forces that shape the event, which may create a sense of insecurity as it moves away from its grassroots nature and becomes increasingly institutionalized and standardized. As Erwen noted, the playlists have become more and more fixed, featuring only viral hits rather than niche tracks, and competition among “road shows” (pre-choreographed, publicly staged dance performances by fans or dance crews) has intensified. RPD is no longer driven purely by fan preferences but also by platform algorithms, which prioritize high-engagement content over subcultural diversity to guarantee cost-effectiveness. The visual economy of RPD—the production of aestheticized dance clips for online consumption—reinforces hierarchies of visibility, privileging participants who fit dominant beauty and performance standards. One organizer stated how appearance plays a decisive role in selecting road shows:

The reviews are very subjective. Sometimes, when two groups have similar dance skills, organizers will choose the one with better appearance because they know these performers will receive more likes when posted online.

The shift toward aesthetic standardization sheds light on the precariousness of RPD, a predicament of “being given over to the touch of the other” (Han, 2018: 337), where vulnerability becomes palpable during collective dance performances. This exposure, felt as precariousness, highlights how participants, despite engaging in the act of shared fun, remain subject to continuous judgment and scrutiny, ultimately contributing to the commodification within a global spectacle. While technically anyone has the opportunity to join, who gets the most visibility to be featured in promotional content has been dictated by platform logic and marketability. The tension between participation and commodification, subversion and standardization, grassroots energy and algorithmic control, mirrors the precarious nature of RPD as a utopia—one that is always negotiated, and always in flux.

Beyond capitalism: State power and moral policing

While RPD navigates capitalist infrastructures to create moments of joy, these spaces are also shaped by state power and regulatory oversight, particularly in more politically charged environments. Dyer acknowledged that entertainment exists within structures of power, yet his analysis primarily focuses on capitalist constraints. In RPD, however, the state plays an equally crucial role in defining acceptable public behaviors, regulating foreign cultural consumption, and shaping nationalist discourse.

Public performances in mainland China, Hong Kong, and other heavily policed urban spaces are subject to state surveillance and intervention (Park et al., 2019). Unlike flash mobs, RPD operates in highly visible spaces, making it easier to regulate, monitor, and shut down whenever necessary. Feng, an organizer in Wuhan, explained how state regulations influence where RPD can be held:

Malls are, of course, safest. If you want to host RPD, you will basically choose malls with pre-approvals. But if you want to dance in public squares or subway stations, it will be impossible. The police will directly ask you to disperse.

While malls provide corporate containment, public spaces remain under strict state control. Unlike more spontaneous RPD events in cities like Los Angeles or Sydney, where dance collectives perform with relative freedom, RPD in China is often seen as a public disturbance unless explicitly sanctioned. This state-controlled spatiality underscores RPD's precarious position—it must remain visible enough to attract participants but not so visible that it becomes a perceived political threat. The tolerance for RPD is conditional: the gatherings must remain contained within commercial settings and not disrupt political or ideological stability. If they become too large, unpredictable, or culturally foreign, they risk state intervention. One organizer confirmed this tricky balance:

If the event is too big and influential, it might be noticed, and we don’t want to be on their [authorities] radar. They may tacitly acknowledge our existence but will never publicly support us.

While the impact of state regulation affecting RPD may be applicable in certain regions, dominant gender ideologies shaping who feels safe participating cut across cultural and national boundaries. Just as disco was policed through racist and homophobic moral panic, RPD is shaped by gendered surveillance. In recent years, Chinese authorities have targeted feminized youth culture, from cracking down on “sissy idols” to banning effeminate male portrayals in media (Yu and Sui, 2023). Since K-pop is often associated with gender fluidity, soft masculinity, and feminized aesthetics (Lee et al., 2020), RPD participants—particularly young men who dance to girl group songs—are often viewed as deviating from state-sanctioned masculinity. Feng observed that certain performances attract more scrutiny than others:

If it's a girl dancing, no one will mind. But if it's a boy dancing to a girl group song, or a boy wearing makeup, some passersby might take pictures and post them online, saying things like “neither man nor woman.”

Feng's observation is not unique as similar concerns were raised by participants in all research sites, showing how gender non-conforming performances tend to provoke public scrutiny across cultural contexts. This surveillance reinforces gender norms, where masculinity is increasingly framed as a site of ideological discipline. Meanwhile, female participants are also subject to moral policing, particularly regarding their appearance and clothing choices. During fieldwork, we overheard a middle-aged spectator comment that one RPD group looked “prettier” than another, dismissing the previous group as “fat people.” Yunqi from Beijing further described how female dancers who align their outfits with K-pop performance aesthetics are often judged or even harassed:

Some people will say, “Are you wearing this on purpose to attract attention?” I’ve also encountered male spectators taking upskirt photos.

The gendered nature of surveillance in RPD embodies broader anxieties about women's visibility in public spaces. While RPD theoretically offers a utopian sense of freedom, it ultimately exists within a regulatory apparatus that dictates how entertainment aligns with state ideology and how bodies must be performed, disciplined, and rendered acceptable in accordance with prevailing cultural norms.

RPD as precarious utopia: Embodied empowerment in contingent spaces

Dancing into risks: Creating precarious publics locally

Although RPD is uniquely influenced by various external forces that shape the events’ format and content, it still holds the ability to create a temporary utopian rupture that might otherwise be unattainable. RPD gatherings, therefore, can be understood as creating what Shresthova (2016: 157) calls precarious publics—one where “there is a considerable gap between voice and influence”. Precarious publics builds on Gray's (2007: 53) conception of boundary publics, which is defined as “iterative, ephemeral experiences of belonging that happen both on the outskirts and at the center(s) of the more traditionally recognized and validated public sphere of civic deliberation”. As Shresthova (2016) notes, precarious publics similarly exist at once within and just beyond the reach of conservative elites attempting to claim control. In such circumstances, youth have to “weigh the perceived benefits of participation against the obstacles and risks” (Shresthova, 2016: 157). However, as Shresthova (2016: 151) identifies in her study of American Muslim youth, their acts “were not conceived as explicitly or even implicitly political”. Similarly, most of our interviewees did not flag political motivations for participation. What renders RPD politically charged is not the act of dancing per se but the context in which it takes place and, more crucially, the way it is interpreted within deeply politicized environments.

This politicized reading is not uniform and translated differently across contexts, where local histories and sociopolitical climates shape the kinds of risks RPD participants face. In cities like Los Angeles and Sydney, public RPD events have occasionally triggered discomfort and confrontation from onlookers, often framed through the lens of xenophobia or racialized unease. The spectacle of mostly East Asian youth performing K-pop choreography in prominent urban spots becomes entangled with broader anxieties about foreign presence and cultural saturation. Lucas, living in Sydney, recalled:

Once we were shooting a video outdoors, and a few drunk local white people rushed in and yelled at us and wanted to beat us up. Later, the only white guy in our team went to talk to them and have it resolved.

For racialized participants in predominantly white societies, occupying space through dancing means not only navigating public performances but also the racial optics of occupying spaces where visibility can slide into legibility as foreignness or excess. Meanwhile, in mainland Chinese cities, the political stakes are configured differently. The Korean entertainment industry has long been a site of political tension in China, as evidenced by the 2016 THAAD dispute, which led to an unofficial ban on Korean entertainment (Paradise, 2019). While K-pop remains popular, the enthusiasm for Korean culture is often framed as a lack of national loyalty (Zhou, 2023). Ze noted this climate:

We are actually trying to weaken the concept of ‘K’ in K-pop RPD and may promote the term A-pop (Asian Pop) in the future because the label of K-pop is sometimes too sensitive, especially when nationalist sentiments are high.

The deliberate rebranding of K-pop as Asian pop reflects a broader strategy among organizers to defuse political sensitivities under growing nationalist scrutiny. The 2024 controversy surrounding the alleged nationalist statements of IVE, a female idol group, exemplifies the risks associated with RPD's reliance on Korean pop culture. Many organizers quietly removed IVE songs from their playlists—mostly not out of personal political conflict but to avoid controversy and backlash. This type of strategic rebranding highlights the fragile balance between transcultural connections and national sentiments. On the one hand, RPD builds a shared space where participants across regions engage with Korean pop culture as a unifying affective language. On the other, moments of geopolitical tension expose the limits of that connection, demonstrating how easily transcultural joy can be reframed as disloyalty. The adoption of broader terms, such as Asian pop, indicates an attempt to preserve the sense of regional belonging while sidestepping the charged politics tied to Korean cultural products. In this way, participants are not rejecting transculturality but actively negotiating its terms, finding ways to continue dancing while attuned to shifting political climates.

Dancing into visibility: The power of RPD on a global scale

Within politicized environments, where youth visibility, transcultural expression, or collective affect are already under heightened surveillance, even the joyful, participatory gesture of dancing can be read as a threat: as defiance, foreign infiltration, or inappropriate public display. RPD becomes legible as a political act not through intention but through reception. This misreading, however, is precisely what makes RPD a site of utopian possibility. The utopian sensibility of RPD lies in its insistence on collective joy in public, even when such joy is precarious, conditional, or fleeting. It is not utopia despite the risk, but because of it. In creating moments of affective togetherness, RPD imagines a different relation to space, identity, and cultural boundaries, one in which participants temporarily refuse the logic of suspicion and control and choose to dance anyway. It is in this fragile, negotiated space that the politics of presence and the politics of aspiration emerge, not always registered as resistance, but as an alternative mode of being together, one that is deeply affective, ephemeral, and utopian in its defiance of what is expected.

These everyday acts of dancing are where the politics of presence begin to take shape. Performing in a public setting with the presence of audiences can be intimidating and demands a certain boldness. However, what begins as nervous hesitation often evolves into the ability to stand tall, feel comfortable, and exist confidently in public. Eric from Los Angeles reflected:

Every time we dance, I see people from different backgrounds. They come together because of K-pop. It feels like people from different worlds are exchanging emotions on the same stage. It's not just about doing the choreography but connecting, feeling seen, and being part of something incredible.

Similar experiences were also brought up by participants from other countries, indicating a global resonance. The experience of collectively stepping into a performance space, being seen, and being celebrated is an assertion of the participants’ presence, not just in the space they occupy but also within a broader cultural context. The act of dancing together, as Franko (2006) and Reed (1998) suggested, can create something new both artistically and politically. This politics of presence in RPD stems from the spontaneous act of dancing to K-pop songs, which transforms the event space into a dynamic site of creative expression. The synchronization of movements during RPD acts as a statement of solidarity and unity, asserting the right of fans to publicly engage in cultural practices that may be seen as outside the mainstream. For many participants, RPD is not just about dancing to their favorite songs but about taking up space in a way that feels new and exhilarating. The sense of rule-free playfulness is central to RPD's utopian appeal. One interviewee from Wuhan captured the essence of this collective embodiment:

When we dance, everyone stands together, feeling whole. We don’t have any special identities or statuses. It's just because we all love K-pop, and all the differences are erased by dancing together.

Beyond the politics of presence, RPD also generates a politics of aspiration. Dancing together in a highly synchronized, stylized, and emotionally charged way invites participants to connect not only with the glamour of idols but also with a larger cultural imaginary, one grounded in mastery, precision, and collective performance. It is through this shared striving that new modes of being and belonging begin to shape. As Jiaojiao from Beijing shared:

Every time we participate in RPD, we try to perfect our moves, even though we all know we are not idols. But in that moment, we all want to make ourselves shine on stage. Everyone works towards that goal together.

For many participants, particularly those in diasporic or politically constrained environments, the stage created by RPD is not merely performative. It offers a socially sanctioned, affectively charged mode of expression that enables participants to make themselves seen without necessarily verbalizing dissent. The collective aspiration here is not just about becoming a star in a literal sense, but about accessing a mode of cultural agency, to move together, be recognized, and create meaning in public. In doing so, RPD participants construct temporary, affective publics that are at once precarious and empowering: precarious because they are shaped by external forces that can shut them down; empowering because they offer a glimpse into what shared belonging and alternative futures might feel like.

Conclusion

As a fleeting yet generative site of collective experience, K-pop RPD continues to attract and inspire young participants through the shared love of K-pop across the world. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews across mainland China, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Melbourne, our study examined how RPD embodies Dyer's (2005) utopian sensibility, constructing a precarious utopian space where global pop culture takes on new meanings within locally specific contexts. In these moments of joy, energy, and collectivity, participants carve out a temporary but powerful form of belonging and empowerment. While this utopian possibility exists within structures of capitalist logic, state regulation, and moral policing, which continually shape who gets to participate and at what cost, RPD still provides participants with a means of reclaiming public space—whether through dance, self-expression, shared fun, or togetherness. For many, these gatherings create moments of visibility and connection that feel all the more urgent in environments where transcultural engagement remains under scrutiny.

By situating RPD within broader discussions of utopian sensibility and the affective politics of entertainment, our study extends Dyer's (2005) theoretical framework by considering transculturality as a utopian solution to contemporary anxieties of alienation and un-belonging in the context of globalization. Existing within both capitalist and state-regulated landscapes, RPD as precarious utopias creates spaces and performances that do not seek permanence, nor do they demand explicit political confrontation, yet their impact stays in the ways bodies remember movement, in the quiet solidarities formed between strangers, and in the ephemeral yet undeniable sensation of feeling fully present, together, in a rhythm of a song. Even as infrastructures and regulatory forces continue to reshape the boundaries of participation and the stakes of being seen, the heart of RPD remains in the utopian beauty of spontaneous collectivity, as well as the enduring hope that such spaces, however precarious, will always find ways to emerge.