Students shine in talent show

Performances from around the world stole the show at Multicultural Night last Friday

Catherine Silvey / Feature Editor / The USD Vista

Performances from cultures across the world filled the stage in the UCs on Friday night. The University of San Diego’s United Front Multicultural Commons (UFMC) hosted its annual Multicultural Night, a huge talent show where clubs and individuals across campus could showcase their most impressive cultural talents.

Before the performances began, attendees feasted on a dinner from cuisines from different regions across the globe, including African, Chinese, Meditteranean, and Mexican food.

The performances themselves, including singing, dancing, poetry, and even ventriloquism, encapsulated many different cultures from USD’s campus.

The Folklorico and Mariachi Association (FAMA) of USD kicked off the night. The club performed a traditional folk dance from the Mexican state of Jalisco, and the dancers’ eye-catching dresses and intricate footwork got the crowd excited for the night to come.

Senior Ioni Tcholakova danced with FAMA, and spoke to the importance of maintaining cultural traditions.

“I think just folk dancing is something that has to be kept up,” Tcholakova said. “It’s really important to the culture, especially to the youth. Bringing the youth out to the culture and getting them involved and getting them thinking about what it means.”   

Some groups practiced months in advance for their performance at Multicultural Night. For Tcholakova, the best part of the whole experience wasn’t the final product, but the bonds that grew with the other members of FAMA.

“FAMA was really important to me just to bring another group of people together,” Tcholakova said. “We say FAMA because it’s supposed to mean ‘familia,’ and it’s really turned into that.” 

Tcholakova’s experience is exactly what Miso Jang wanted to come out of Multicultural Night. She is a graduate student and a graduate assistant at the UFMC. She was one of the driving forces behind producing the event, and has been planning it for months. 

Friday night, she saw all of her planning come to fruition. More than anything, she wanted the event to be an outlet for underrepresented students at USD.

“Especially as USD being a predominantly white institution, I feel like I really want to create that platform for students to express their cultural identity because I don’t feel like we have a lot of spaces that can host that,” Jang said. “And I feel that diversity should be celebrated and is something that is so beautiful and should be showcased.”

There wasn’t only cultural diversity, however — no two performances were the same, as some were traditional, like Danielle Hanji Kim’s performance of Arirang, a Korean folk song. Others were modern, like Less Than Three Dance Crew’s (LT3) hip hop and R&B dance mashup. Sophomore Andrew Tolentino, a member and choreographer of LT3, shared the culture behind the hip hop and dance community.

“The culture that we try to express is more of your passion of dance and how it evolves through generations,” Tolentino said. “Also, it’s a way you can really express and vent out in a different medium. It’s a nice way to escape.”

Despite the camaraderie throughout the night, Multicultural Night ultimately was a competitive talent show. Winners were chosen by a panel of judges, including ASG President Marion Chavarria Rivera, graduate students, and USD’s own Fr. Gino Correa. Although scoring the different performances was difficult, he said getting invested into and excited about the performances was easy.

“It was really a wonderful, free flowing, spontaneous kind of atmosphere,” Correa said. “So it was kind of easy for me to get into that free flowing, authentic kind of response to the performers, the audience.”

He said the energy in the room was contagious. 

“I think it’s really wonderful when we have those moments where our challenge is to come out of our comfort zone, really be ourself, be free, be spontaneous,” Correa said. “And it’s amazing, even in our youth, or whatever age we are, how hard that can be sometimes. But once we do it, it’s contagious. And that’s what I like about it. The contagion goes out and it brings everybody in. And we just need more events like that. That kind of contagion is important.”

At the end of the evening, all attendees of Multicultural Night were invited to come to the front and dance together as a community. Dozens spilled onto the stage and, in that moment, the diversity and multiculturalism at USD came together to celebrate in the universal culture of the Cha Cha Slide.