June 2010
Where can you spend the day enjoying music, dance, and poetry from all corners of the globe; not to mention a tap dance by Tony Danza? Multicultural Day at Northeast High School is the place!
On June 9th, Philadelphia public school students participating in various after-school cultural clubs, representative of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the school, performed to approximately 2,500 of their fellow students throughout the day. Due to the sheer size of the student body (approximately 3,600 students), students came to the auditorium in groups according to their class periods, which meant that the dedicated singers, dancers, and performers repeated their pieces five times! The impressive line-up included a meringue dance by the Latino Club, a South Asian dance by the Indo-Pak Club, an African dance by the African Club, an instrumental piece played on the traditional Chinese string instrument, a Martial Arts dance demonstration, a collaborative poem written and read by several students from the Poetry Club, and a tap dance performed by actor Tony Danza, who happens to be teaching at NEHS this year.
Students in Al-Bustan’s dance workshops performed the dabkeh, a traditional line dance common in Palestine/Lebanon/Syria, under the guidance of Al-Bustan’s music and dance instructor Hafez El Ali Kotain. Another group of students presented a percussion routine of solo arrangements created by the students with instructor Hafez.
Several of the students who signed up for the after-school class with Hafez were Arab, mostly from Iraq and Palestine, but many of the students came from other countried, including Turkey and Albania. With only 8 weeks of instruction with Hafez, the students’ accomplishments were astounding. Students danced and drummed with confidence, joy and enthusiasm. Especially exciting was the fact that students brought much of their own personality, rhythms and ideas into their performance. Mixed in with the traditional Arab rhythms were hip hop beats, and even the faintest hints of marching band drum beats as well. The Multicultural Dancers also added their own style to the dabkeh dance. After he had guided them through the basics of the dabke, students creatively added their own steps to it. Double kicks here, an extra jump there, it was clear that the students were making this dance their own. “This is all them!” Hafez told me proudly at the dress rehearsal. As an educator, I could understand the pride in Hafez’s voice.
The students’ performance went off without a hitch, despite the many hours it spanned. The solo created by the percussion students was creative, exciting, and masterfully performed. The applause for the percussion group was almost defeaning each time they played! The dancers (adeptly named the Multicultural Dance Group) were led by a student who had recently emigrated from Iraq. He was the head of the dabke line, traditionally a spot reserved for the leader of the dance. Their performance was graceful, flowed beautifully and was received enthusiastically by an audience who eagerly clapped to the beat. By the end of the five hours of performing for their peers, the students told me their feet hurt from pounding on the hardwood floor, and hands hurt from beating on their tablas (Arab drum). But I could see in their proud smiles at the end of the day that they felt it was all worth it.
Sally Bonet – Education Director
