Music from countries such as China and regions such as Latin America filled the Multicultural Center on Tuesday evening as students from across campus learned how to dance along to different dances from around the world.
“This is the ideal place for it to be,” Tedra Bennett, assistant director of programming and outreach at the Multicultural Center, said. “If we’re advocates for multiculturalism, then having a very diverse event such as Dance Around The World needs to be here and needs to be spearheaded by the Multicultural Center.”
Bennett said that the Dance Around the World event took two weeks to plan, and it had been held before in the D.P. Culp Center Auditorium before renovations to the building started.
The biggest difference this year was that instead of watching dancers preform, students were able to teach different dances to participants.
Diego Rodriguez, a sophomore at ETSU, taught a style of dance known as Bachata.
“It’s a ballroom dance basically,” Rodriguez said. “Think of it as similar to the waltz.”
Rodriquez said that the Bachata is a genre of music from Latin America, and he initially came to the Dance Around The World to support the Hispanic American Student Committee Alliance.
“I’ll be honest, I wasn’t originally planning to instruct a dance,” Rodriguez said. “It’s fairly simple; straight forward. It’s four steps to the left; four steps to the right. You can throw in a turn. It’s very basic.”
ETSU student Doris Owah, representing Shades of Africa, taught the participants a style of dance called Afrobeats.
“It started in West Africa,” ETSU Owah said. “But it spread all over Africa, so each country has its own kind of style.”
Owah said that she made the choreography for the dance up on the spot, but she dances regularly.
“I have this African dance group,” Owah said. “I teach kids who are in high school and middle school. We usually practice once or twice a week.”
To teach the participants at the Multicultural Center, Owah said she chose a beginning dance with a slow tempo so participants could learn the dance quickly.
“African dancing is all about having fun,” Owah said. “Once you get the steps down, you can create you own style. It’s like a lot of the time when you’re dancing you show your personality in your dance, and no matter what people will cheer you on.
Owah said the best thing about teaching was the diveristy within the crowd.
“What I really like about it was people from different backgrounds trying to come together and learn everyone’s dance,” said Owah. “I just thought it was cool that we had a diverse group of people that wanted to learn.”
Owah said she recommends students come to events like Dance Around the World to learn about other cultures.
“I think diversity is what makes ETSU great,” Owah said. “We can only communicate with each other if we try to learn each other’s culture. So if you want to build a better school and a better community, you try to talk to people from different backgrounds.”
