Cultural Rhythms: The Highlights

Cultural Rhythms, the Harvard Foundation’s annual show celebrating Harvard’s diversity, was held Saturday afternoon and featured many student groups on campus as well as the gorgeous Lucy Liu (#tbt to Charlie’s Angels when we all wanted to grow up and become crime-fighting detectives) as this year’s Artist of the Year. Here are some of Flyby’s highlights from the show:

The Harvard Philippine Forum’s Sayaw sa Bangko
While all of the student group performances were amazing, the Harvard Philippine Forum’s Sayaw sa Bangko, Tagalog for “Dance on Benches,” was so memorable. Seriously, they danced in pairs on narrow benches, then they jumped up and down said narrow benches, and then finally they stacked the narrow benches up and then danced and jumped from those heights– just wow. Members of the club explained afterwards that this traditional dance was a way for people from rural villages to get together and have fun spending time together.

Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons presented the Artist of the Year Award to Lucy Liu
To be honest, I was pretty excited to see Dean Fitzsimmons in the flesh, seeing as he was the one to sign off on all of our blessed emails and letters that we had gotten into Harvard. He then explained all of Lucy Liu’s accomplishments (FYI: she is an actor, producer, visual artist, and humanitarian), which consequently made me wonder what I’m doing with my life. But that’s a story for another time. He even pointed out that Liu had attended Stuyvesant High School, a school with an admissions rate lower than Harvard itself (uh what?!).

The rapport between the student hosts Hasani Hayden ‘19 and Faith Jackson ‘16
The interludes between each act were exciting because the audience saw the progression between the on-stage relationship of Hayden and Jackson, who liked to throw shade at each other. One particular #burn I liked was when Hayden gave a shoutout to all his fellow freshmen in the crowd, to which Jackson gave a shoutout to everyone not taking Expos this year.