Culture Show Update

Posted by Kate F. on November 21 2006

My last entry was a simple little-introduce-my-blog piece of writing, so I think I need to do some blog updating.

Culture Show, which I’ve mentioned in previous entries, went well. It was a production held at Shriver Hall on Saturday, November 11, that was comprised of singing and dancing performances representing various cultures, including American culture. I danced in a routine consisting of reggaeton, bachata, merengue, and salsa with the OLÉ Dance Group towards the end of the first act, and with the Filipino Students Association (FSA) towards the beginning of the second act. (By the way, JHU_Liny also performed in Culture Show, as part of Shakti, the classical Indian dance group! Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch her, since I was changing from my OLÉ outfit to my FSA outfit.) FSA danced the following two Filipino folk dances: sayaw sa bangko (literally, “dance of the bench”), a rural folk dance performed by couples on narrow benches (the ones that we used were ten inches wide); and singkil, a traditional Muslim folk dance from the southern Philippines. I was in sayaw sa bangko, and I was grateful that I didn’t fall while dancing it!

You’re hoping to view some non-textual media, aren’t you? Here you go! Embedded in this paragraph is a group photo of the members of OLÉ Dance Group who performed in Culture Show. (FYI, there have been so many members of OLÉ Dance Group this year that those of us who performed at Latino Fest and Culture Show were only a representation of the entire group; we had determined who would perform in those two events via auditions sometime in October.) There’s also a group photo of the members of FSA immediately after Culture Show. Finally, there are YouTube videos of the OLÉ dance routine from Culture Show and both FSA dance routines from Culture Show. In the OLÉ video, I’m the girl at the second from the right starting at around 0:25, and in the FSA video, I’m the girl dancing on the bench at the right. Just so you know, the emcee seen at the beginning of the FSA video erroneously made us sound very skillful by saying that we were dancing on five-inch-wide benches for sayaw sa bangko.

That’s all I have to say about Culture Show! Vale. (That means, “Goodbye,” in Latin.)

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4 Comments

  1. I literally jumped when I heard Flow Natural of Tito El Bambino! It’s just that I’m from Puerto Rico and hearing that song all the way up in MD made me happy!

  2. Kate!! Good job at the Culturefest!!! Your performance with OLE AND with FSA was very impressive…and you were ALWAYS smiling while you danced, which made it even better :-D (I was in the front row and called out your name at the end of both of your performances :-x).
    I remember last year when I was in SLAM, we performed with FSA…it was great. Jojo and I are STILL looking for who videotaped the Culturefest from last year so we can see it.
    Liny’s performance was really good too. The crowd was really into their dancing.

  3. Kate,
    Since you were writing about a culture show, I was wondering if you knew if there is any sort of armenian population at JHU or in Baltimore. I come from LA, which is the largest diaspora of armenians, and though i am glad to get away from outdated traditions, I don’t want to completely forget my culture either.

  4. I’m sorry, but I don’t know the population of Armenians at JHU or Baltimore, and I couldn’t find that information online. If there’s an organization that raises awareness of Armenian culture and has chapters throughout the United States, then try contacting your local chapter of that organization and asking if the people there could give you any information about the Armenian population in Baltimore. Otherwise, try to find someone in the Armenian community at L.A. who knows someone in Baltimore who could tell you about the status of Armenian culture in Baltimore.

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