Cultural dances for a cause
The multicultural dances of Dance for Hope, a charity concert hosted by the Interact club, were joined by the International Baccalaureate dance students on March 4, 2016. The event, which was a fundraiser for the American Cancer society, raised $1456.
Groups of students met on their own time to rehearse their numbers for the performance. Many different cultural dances including Chinese, Flamenco, and Hula were performed by students, adults, and guest studios. One such group of students rehearsed a Bollywood dance choreographed by junior Rachna Deshpande.
“It’s really fun because you get to dance with your friends and get to raise money for a worthy cause,” Hannah Dembla, sophomore, said.
A few hours each week, students met to rehearse their dance. “The most difficult part is learning the dance because I’m a slow learner, but I will still practice out of regular practice to get it right,” Dembla said.
Although the International Baccalaureate (IB) dance concert and Dance for Hope have been separate events in the past, IB Dance teacher Cameo Carolan and student coordinator Anissa Andalon, senior, worked to make this a joint event.
“I really enjoyed it. This is my first year not coaching the dance team and since I’m not dealing with that, it opened my eyes to other things on campus,” Carolan said. “Everything I (did was) for competition and everything (had) to be perfect. This was more celebratory and light-hearted.”
Andalon also enjoyed the experience of planning the event. “Cameo and I worked together as far as making sure the set list was good. Our collaboration was mainly related to the dancing aspects and as the student coordinator I got the food donations and initially set up all the dancers that would be performing,” Andalon said. “I don’t professionally dance but it’s good to have someone who has worked in dance. She helped me out a lot.”
In spite of not having extensive dance experience, many students chose to take part in order to make friends, have fun, and raise money for a cause.
“I decided to do the (Bollywood) dance because I wanted to try something new, not because I believed I was any good at dancing,” Amaan Kazi, junior, said. “The best part is definitely being able to attend practices and spend time with people I don’t normally talk to all the time.”
The event also helped students to become familiar with new experiences. “I would definitely recommend this to others,” Kazi said. “It gets you out of your comfort zone which initially seems intimidating, but after a while, I think you come to enjoy the feeling of being able to perform with people who have learned the dance with you.”
