international street festival: Dance performances
Dance Performances
Click through the videos below to see performances produced by Nepalese Student Association (NSA), Filipino Student Association (FSA), Arab Cultural Association (ACA), African Student Union (ASU), Vietnamese Student Association (VSA), and Pamoja Dance Company (*please note adult language in the song lyrics of Pamoja’s video).
"Work & Whine" with CaribSA
Caribbean Student Association (CaribSA) hosted a live “Work & Whine” dance workshop on Wednesday, April 7 @ 5:30pm EST. Check out the description below and click to watch the recording and to dance alongside CaribSA.
- “Join our dance troup, CaribSA Vybz, for a Work and Whine class! Our dance coordinators will be taking you along a rhythmic journey in the style of a workout class. They will also be teaching the basics of whining before delving into the different routines. Through this class, we hope you will recognize the cultural significance of whining, how it differs from contemporary American dancing, and how it is featured in many prominent festivals and celebrations across the Caribbean region. We also hope you will learn about the origins of Soca, Dancehall, and Reggaetón music and how it is a representation of the spirit of West Indian people.”
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The documentary, A Journey Through Time: A Story of Perseverance, was produced and directed by members of the African Student Union. The purpose of this documentary was to tell the story of African culture and its people through art, dance performances, fashion, and narration. A Journey Through Time: A Story of Perseverance spans African history from the 13th century to now, illustrating the theme of strength, perseverance, and female empowerment. As a community, Africans have survived throughout our history of slavery, colonization, and imperialism. Despite all these circumstances, we remain strong and retain our history and core values. This vigor and spirit of perseverance are present in the young girls on the Youth Advisory Council of Project Safety Nets who we chose to contribute back to this year. Through this documentary, we got a chance to remind ourselves of the power of our people and our ability to adapt while also maintaining our culture.
In this performance, Arab Cultural Association (ACA) performs Dabke dancing, a Levantine folk dance. The dance originated from a region in the Middle East that includes the countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. It is also a form of line dancing that has a unique origin story: dabke arose from a common household chore that people used to do to keep their houses from crumbling, as people used to gather to join hands and work in lines to seal the cracks that would appear on the ceiling from rain and wear & tear. Even though home-building methods and strong roof-building strategies have advanced, people who identify as a part of the MENA culture still dance dabke as a link that identifies them with their heritage, and is now a unique art form that expresses unity and self-expression of culture.
UGA FSA aims to spread the Filipino culture locally in Athens and also through the university campus. Dances are a big part of how we do that. Kalapati is a word meaning “dove.” The dance mimics the graceful and gentle movements characteristic of dove courting behavior. Kalapati originates from the city of Cabugao, within the province of Ilocos Sur in the northern part of the Philippines. We hope you enjoy this brief but beautiful taste of Filipino culture!
This a Vietnamese traditional dance performance that features performers wearing Vietnamese dresses known as an ao dai using traditional dance props like the Vietnamese hand fans, long silk fans, and nón lá hat (leaf hat) accompanied by a remix of both modern and traditional Vietnamese songs.
Join members from the Nepalese Student Association in celebrating Nepali culture by watching their dance performance created for International Street Festival 2021.
Pamoja is a dance company at UGA that provides students a place to dance without having to major in dance. We hope that the audience will leave the performance with an appreciation for music and how it can easily be used as a form of expression. Self-expression is an important aspect of black culture, and dance allows us to communicate our feelings when we can’t find the words to do so. We would like the audience to think of how they best express themselves. (*Please note adult language in the song lyrics of this video).