Dylan Le

Dr. Baard
ACS 1000
29 November 2014
SAMOSA Cultural Event
On November 22nd, I attended the SAMOSA (Southeast Asian Multicultural
Organized Students Association) cultural event that took place in the Villanova room. I
would have to say that this event was the best culmination of performances Ive seen at
Villanova. Not only did I attend the SAMOSA show, I also performed for the ASA (Asian
Student Association) Tinikling Dance group. I would like to reflect on this event from the
perspective of being a performer and then an audience member. I actually did not know
about the SAMOSA event until I signed up for the tinikling dance group. Tinikling is not
a common dance that people hear of. Just like everyone who never heard of the dance
before, I questioned, what exactly is this dance? They introduced me to the dance with a
video and said it was a traditional Filipino dance. When they said Filipino, I was
automatically interested. Tinikling is a dance that utilizes bamboo sticks to clap in
between beats. Then you would have dancers come up with choreograph to dance in
between the sticks as they clap to the beat. I am half Vietnamese and half Filipino but
never actually learned much about Filipino culture. My family did not grow up to
Filipino culture and all I ever learned was the Vietnamese language and its culture. I felt
like this would be a great opportunity to learn more about Filipinos and interact with
more students of my culture.
In preparation for the show, I practiced every night two weeks prior to the show. I
had a great time learning the dance and became closer with the other dancers. As the days
were approaching to the show, I had some insecurity because I didnt know what the
show was going to consist of. I knew that we were dancing and we werent going to get
dress rehearsal time until the day of. Our dress rehearsal was disastrous because we were
not used to the stage setting and our transitions were awkward due to the positioning of
the stage. However, we were able to clean up our performance a few hours before the
actual performance. When it was time for the show, I was completely mesmerized by
each performance. The show took on a skit similar to the TV show called, How I Met
Your Mother. They did little skits and in between each skit would be a dance
performance. Each grade had their own performance and the freshman kicked it off with
the best performance. Our tinikling performance was right before intermission and I was
really nervous. After observing a few performances and the Wildcat Dancers before us
made me feel as if we werent as good as the other groups. Also tinikling is an intricate
dance, which leaves a lot of room for errors. It requires the usage of a prop and proper
timing to match with the beat. However, we were confident and performed flawlessly!
Being able to perform before intermission was also great because it allowed me to watch
the rest of the show instead of being stressed and practicing our steps. The two best
performances of the night were Tempe Universitys Bhangra and our very own NOVA
Nassa group. Bhangra is the mixture of Punjabi folk music with the integration of
western pop music. This performance blew my mind because the choreography was
amazing and the music made me want to dance. Then there was NOVA Nassa, the fusion
dance team that supposedly competed nationally. I was stunned because I did not know

Villanova had a dance team like this. I can see how they are able to compete at a national
level and it was a performance that definitely took a lot of time to be put together.
Overall, the show was a great demonstration of dances from South Asian culture.
However, I felt that I didnt learn a lot about the different cultures but rather observed
what each culture had to offer through their dances. I had a great experience and what
surprised me the most was the gap of performances from the dress rehearsal to the real
show.