Shaikha Almawlani
Staff Writer
Participants picked up a palette and a brush and started painting on a single, large sheet of paper. After 20 minutes, they moved five steps to the right and continued the unfinished work in front of them.
When the group art project was finished, the performance portion of the night, composed of cultural dance pieces, began.
Cabaret Student Productions featured group art and dance Tuesday in the Jane Dibbell Cabaret Theatre – to provide a space for artistic diversity and cultural inclusion.
The event, called “Appreciation, not Appropriation,” was aimed at inclusion and diversity, sophomore theater major Courtney Clark said.
“We just wanted to provide a space to collaborate and address that we are different people,” Clark, Cabaret Student Productions president, said.
“We are not trying to erase that or make it anything that it isn’t.”
The group art project was dedicated to promoting collaboration amongst a diverse audience.
“We want to unify people through art in terms of diversity, especially on campus,” Clark said.
Stephanie Ferreyra, a freshman at Cal Poly Pomona, was invited to perform by CAPA theater major Ellie Nelson.
Ferreyra performed a contemporary piece to the “Mission Impossible” theme song choreographed by Nelson.
Freshman art history major Madelyn Duran performed a Ballet Folklorico piece to “La Negra.”
She said she hoped to share her Mexican heritage with a larger audience. Duran has been dancing since she was in fourth grade. She said she enjoys performing at events aimed at diversity and culture.
“If there was something I could offer, it would be my Mexican culture,” Duran said. “I think diversity is really important and being able to mix cultures together and see how things are from different perspectives.”
Clark produces the Cabaret Series this semester along with sophomore theater major Ashley Weaver, Cabaret Student Productions vice president.
“Throughout the different weeks, we like to switch it up so that people would know that this space is here,” Weaver said.
“Sometimes, if we stick to the same thing often, we see the same people, which we love, but we want new people to come in and know that we are here,” she said.
The series began during the fall semester as senior theater major Michaela Buckley’s senior project.
It was then continued due to Clark and Weaver’s commitment to providing a place for students to express themselves artistically.
“We know that being an artist is hard and sometimes finding a platform for your art is hard, so we would like to provide that,” Clark said.
“Dance is very important to both Ashley and I as a form of expression, especially that we do not have a dance major at our school,” she said.
Cabaret Student Productions will host “The Creativity Thing” at 8:30 p.m. April 25 in the Jane Dibbell Cabaret Theatre.
The final event of the semester will be “Youth Art Night” at 7:30 p.m. May 9.
Shaikha Almawlani can be reached on shaikha.almawlani@laverne.edu.
Shaikha Almawlani
