What does your ideal weekend night out look like? If it includes food, dancing and a whole lot of spectacle, this upcoming Saturday is your lucky day. On Oct. 27 at 7 p.m., Trinity’s Filipino Student Association (FSA) will host their annual Mabuhay festival in Laurie Auditorium.
As a part of Filipino Heritage Month at Trinity, the event will feature dance routines and various food dishes focused on a celebration of Filipino culture. Throughout the semester, FSA officers have been hard at work in putting this event together.
“I feel like Mabuhay is always very different every year coming from each dancer, each choreographer and the whole [of each] dance in general. Even though it is very similar dance techniques, you can definitely see every personality [involved],” said Samantha Lee, senior and co-president of FSA.
Multiple student groups on campus have been working to prepare acts inspired by aspects of Filipino culture for the event. The show will include student-choreographed dances and performances by groups such as FSA, Loon-E Crew, Top Naach, the Prowlers, the Acabellas and the Trinitones.
“Everyone has been so cooperative and so great and willing to work with [FSA], so we’re really excited about that,” Lee said.
This year’s Mabuhay festival will include performances that incorporate traditional aspects of Filipino dance and music as well as some more contemporary twists.
“We’re trying to mix some traditional with a lot of modern dances to showcase all aspects of Filipino culture,” said Christina Guo, senior and FSA co-president.
Lee gave a preview of some of the dance acts set to be performed at the show.
“We have some dances which are really traditional such as a candle dance, which is something I’m actually choreographing. It’s a female-dominated dance with candles, it’s a very beautiful representation of the culture,” Lee said.
Another traditional dance you can expect to see this Saturday will be “Tinikling,” in which dancers move in interaction with large bamboo sticks slid across the stage.
“[It’s] a very vibrant, loud dance that has huge wooden bamboo sticks,” Lee said.
Trinity’s hip-hop dance crew, Loon-E Crew, is among the many student groups performing at Mabuhay this year. Sophomore and co-captain Logan Muzyka has enjoyed the rehearsal process for the troupe’s routine, which was choreographed by her fellow co-captain, senior Chancie Calliham, to Bruno Mars’s song “Finesse.”
“It’s going to have a ‘90s vibe to it, because the song kind of has an old-school feel. So we’re going to dress the part. You’ll see [that] in the choreography, which is also pretty old-school hip-hop. So that should be fun for us,” Muzyka said.
Free food lovers, take notice: FSA will be bringing back several favorite Filipino dishes to be served at this year’s Mabuhay festival after the live performances.
“I’m excited to see people having fun and learning about Filipino heritage,” Lee said. “I’m hoping that the certain people who come do enjoy the experience and do learn something that they didn’t know before — whether that is something small like a certain dance they didn’t know, or something big like some food that they didn’t know existed and they really loved it.”
For more information about Mabuhay and Filipino Student Association, you can contact co-presidents Samantha Lee at [email protected] and Christina Guo at [email protected].
