Some holiday celebrations transcend religion and culture.
Anokha, Taiko, Unity, the Middle Eastern Belly Dance ensemble Obvious, and Polar Bear Swing will come together in a celebration of unity, South Asian culture, and cultural fusion at the Diwali Dance Show tonight.
Anokha, Bowdoin's South Asian culture and dance student group, organized and planned the event, which has been in the works since this summer. The show aims to celebrate the essence of Diwali, a five-day traditional South Asian holiday known as the "festival of lights," but also to give student groups at Bowdoin an opportunity to perform together.
"We [Anokha] haven't done anything this big on our own. It's an opportunity for us to put on something big and bring a bit of our culture to the campus," said Anokha co-leader Nehal Patel '10.
While each student group will perform its own individual piece, Anokha, Taiko drums and Unity, Bowdoin's step team, will open the show with a collaborative piece. Their performance will blend South Asian culture, rhythmic percussion, and dance into what Unity leader Oronde Cruger '11 called "a kind of showdown and a fusion of different acts."
"We wanted to get all of these groups to come together because we are not performing in December Dance this year," said Anokha co-leader Nandini Vijayakumar '10. "The holiday [Diwali] is about coming together and doing things with family and friends. A perfect way to do this is through dance."
Several student groups enthusiastically accepted Anokha's invitation to collaborate with them and make the Diwali dance show possible.
"We thought it would be really awesome to do some kind of a collaboration with Anokha. This fusion of styles is everything Unity stands for," said Cruger. "It's a culmination of people coming [together] from all walks of life."
While the show aims to promote Bowdoin's multicultural identity, there will be a focus on South Asian culture in particular.
"Its fun and interesting to learn about other cultures and bring forth issues people aren't aware of. This is a way to get people who are interested in learning about other cultures and people supporting their friends get to see and be exposed to something new," Cruger said.
The Middle Eastern Belly Dance Ensemble will perform an individual piece that includes traditional choreography and improvisation. Through their dance, the group aims to introduce Middle Eastern culture to the Bowdoin community while eliminating the negative sexual stigma the dance tends to carry.
"We didn't have a lot of chances to perform in the past, but each semester we're getting more and more exposure," said co-leader Dominique Johnson '10. "This will give us a chance to practice our performance skills and to show people that belly dancing isn't what Western society thinks of it as. It's not a sexual dance—it's a cultural dance that is difficult to do. It has meaning."
In addition to the variety of student groups performing, the Diwali Dance Show will include a solo performance by a traditional Barathantayam dancer, Samana Gururaja, a native of India and current student at NYU. Barathantayam is a traditional Indian dance form that is characterized by difficult, rapid footwork and forms the classical foundation for modern dance forms like Bollywood.
"Barathanytaym is a very classical form of Indian dance that we wanted to show because it is a big part of South Asian culture...I think a lot of people don't realize how important [dance] can be," said Patel.
Expanding on the holiday's literal celebration of light, the Diwali dance show aims to bring a variety of students together to promote tolerance and unity through the various student performances. The show will run from 8 to 10 p.m. tonight in Morell Lounge. Limited appetizers will be served, courtesy of Shere Punjab.
"As a festival of light, Diwali symbolizes the triumph of knowledge over ignorance. The general theme is the triumph of good over evil. For us, unity is that good coming out," said Patel.