Culture Show offers wide array of dance and music talent

This weekend, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs took the Hopkins community on a journey of music and dance around the world through Culture Show 2010. This show featured 16 different student groups performing a variety of different dances and songs over two hours.

Cuture Show is one of the most highly anticipated events in the first semester, coming at a time when students are nearing the end of their classes and beginning to stress about finals; the house was packed with students hoping to relax and unwind for two and a half hours and simply enjoy an evening of the arts. All the groups who performed left these students feeling satisfied and like their time had been well spent.

The show was hosted by students Brenton Williams and Sarah Lee, whose banter and commentary provided entertainment for the audience between acts while the performance groups prepared behind the curtain. They were clearly having fun and got the audience excited even before the first dance.

Culture Show opened with the JHU Fillipino Students Association, who performed two different dances. In the first, each dancer balanced a candle on his or her head as well as in each hand while moving around and twisting around on the stage. At one point, the dancers did a full 360 degree roll onstage while still managing to keep the candles balanced, which was certainly no easy feat. Not one person dropped a candle, which showed their skill and their ability to balance while doing a graceful dance.

The other performance paired each dancer up as they jumped between sticks — intricate footwork and timing (especially at the end when it seemed to be too fast to keep up with) were integral in this dance, and they pulled this off perfectly as well, giving the audience a brief taste of traditional Fillipino dances.

The JHU Modern Dance troupe performed next with a piece titled “Structures.” They were entirely synchronized, and their dance fit the title of the piece perfectly, as the dancers used their bodies to create different structures. Most of the dance required the performers to rely on their partners and the rest of the team, and it was clear that they worked together very well.

For instance, at one point in the dance, a performer ran towards the group, and everyone lifted her off the ground without any sort of pause, creating one smooth, flowing gesture.

The next group was a vocal group called Kranti, the Hindi-English a cappella group. They performed a song called “Kithara,” in which a woman reminisces about love. The background voices were solid, and they did quite a bit to showcase the soloist.

After Kranti came the Rasin Haitian Dance, a group that performed a blend of three different dances. These dances ranged from slow and quiet to loud and energetic. True to their music, the performers were full of energy as well, bouncing across the stage and exploring traditional Haitian music and song with the audience.

The JHU Ladybirds’ performance was much like the bright colors of their leggings: Joyful and energetic. They feature performing style jazz, with influences from Bob Fosse and Broadway as well as Michael Jackson. They did a medley of Jackson’s pieces — “Come Together,” “Beat It,” and “Black or White.” The dance was full of sharp movements and energy, and it was clear that they weren’t just performing; they actually wanted to be there on stage, and they loved what they were doing. It wasn’t just their talent that won the audience over, but their enthusiasm as well.

Audience members gave it up for the next group, Temp d’Afrique. The group specializes in traditional and modern African dances and in this show, they showcased dance styles from eastern, central, and western Africa.

Each section was totally different, but the audience’s fervor stayed strong. Throughout all three dances, audience members screamed, cheered and clapped, making it seem like a giant party was happening in Shriver.

The energy was contagious, and everyone clapped along with the music almost from the performance’s onset. No one wanted the dance to end; the cheers at the end of this performance were practically deafening.

Ketzev, a Jewish a cappella group, performed next. Again, the background voices were extremely well done — they sounded like actual instruments rather than voices. This made the song feel as though it was fully backed with a band rather than with mere human voices.

Right before intermission, the Irish dancers performed both hard and soft shoe dancing. Their capability to move their feet to create a rhythm with their shoes was incredible. It was fast and intricate and they never lost their balance or had to put their arms out to steady themselves. The tapping of the shoes kept the beat of the music, and they even had a small encore performance with their bows.

The first group after intermission was Capoeria. This was a dance in which martial arts is combined with music and dance, making the movements extremely graceful, but also extremely dangerous.

There was a lot of complicated movement, and the twists and flips the performers did in the air made them seem like they were almost weightless.

Other flips looked like they would land an average person on his or her back, but the dancers were able to stay upright. Such a dance also requires solid choreography and practice, especially when they kicked at people’s heads. The fact that no one was hurt was a testament to how hard the members of Capoeria worked.

Shakti, a classical Indian dance group, performed their own interpretation of Beauty and the Beast. The audience was able to tell what was happening in the story from just facial expressions and the dance and music alone; it was clear what was happening almost every step of the way. All the dancers were very together, moving as one group.

The Gospel Choir was next, singing “He’s Alive.” Their voices were a nice blend and complimented each other, making it sound like one voice singing in four part harmony rather than a group of different voices. They were loud and full of passion, proclaiming the word of God through music.

Most of the audience was familiar with the music used in Jaywalk’s performance, as the group picked a song from the Fight Club soundtrack for their dance. The dancers were dressed in black shirts and army green pants, which was appropriate as there was something particularly martial about the whole performance. The dance itself was very physical — they used each other for balance and lifted each other at parts of the dance. Such physicality was used in order to show a separation from materialism in today’s world and feeling alive.

JHU Ballet Company performed classical ballet. They were very graceful and showed off great poise in their elegant movements. Ballet is a difficult dance form to master, but all of the dancers in this performance showed great stamina and strength.

The next group, VIVAZ, which means “lively” in Spanish, was a sudden and abrupt change from ballet. The dancers were full of excitement, and their music was rhythmic. They showed off many different styles of dance and music in one performance, exploring the culture of the Caribbean arts.

JOSH is the all-women cultural dance troupe with an emphasis on Indian classical dance forms. However, the group incorporated many styles into their Culture Show dance. Their performance focused on the story of a woman learning Indian dance styles in order to impress a man, and therefore, they not only showed off different dance styles, but also put a more modern twist on classical dances, making the whole thing more interesting by giving it a backstory.

The final group of the evening was the Chinese Lion Dance, a dance that is supposed to bring good luck and prosperity to the viewers. This dance also focused on storytelling, but while the other performances used both song and dance to tell a story, this dance only utilized movement, since the background “music” was only composed of cymbals and drums.

The dance was very demanding physically: at several points in the show, the person who was the “legs” of the lion would lift the person who was the “head” of the lion up on their shoulders, and at other points, the dancers had to spend a lot of their time hunched over in the lion costume. They pulled it off spectacularly, though, since it actually looked like a four-legged animal was running around the stage.

Overall, the audience was treated to a trip throughout time and different cultures by the sixteen student groups performing at the culture show. The only criticism was that the show started late, and the intermission ran long, causing the show to wrap up about forty-five minutes longer than planned.

However, this didn’t matter, because the groups were so good that no one minded spending another hour watching them. It was a very satisfying evening, and judging from the volume of the cheers, Culture Show 2010 was a thorough showcase of the various talents of the singers and dancers at Hopkins, and students are already looking forward to the performances offered next year.