PAN-ASIAN PACIFIC ISLANDER PERSPECTIVES
I'm a title. Click to edit me.
PAN-API PERSPECTIVES, MARCH 25-30, 2013
The weeklong festival featured sixteen events in six days, presented by the Humboldt API community and allies, coming together to share their stories and express themselves in their own ways.
Calligraphy: Tai Ji/Qi Gong in Motion workshop, March 30, 2013 (photo credit Alison Hong-Novotney)
Calligraphy: Tai Ji/Qi Gong in Motion workshop (photo credit Alison Hong-Novotney)
March 28, 2013, photo credit Mark Larson
Calligraphy: Tai Ji/Qi Gong in Motion workshop, March 30, 2013 (photo credit Alison Hong-Novotney)
See the sights of the the festival! Enjoy the photo gallery compilation!
From Hawaiian Hula to North Indian Bhangra, the festival featured different generations and ways of thinking by many diverse groups within the Pan-Asian Pacific Islander ethnicity.
People of API descent and allies came together to listen, discuss, celebrate, share food, dance, and music to learn and form alliances.
We hope that the community will continue to engage each other as resources going forward and carry on the new connections made during the festival.
Polynesian Siva Dance photos and video
Alina Randall (center), HSU Sociology graduate student, led a performance the Polynesian Siva Dance on March 28, 2013.A Siva Samoa is a traditional Samoan dance from American Samoa. Performing a Siva is honorable as it retains the dancers grace, culture, and respect for high chiefs and the Samoan culture.
She was joined by Evelyn Tupua (left) and Dani Randall (right).
After the demonstration, Alina led a lesson for the crowd to learn part of the dance. HSU students, family, and children all joined in to learn the dance, having fun, and trying something new!
Read more about Alina and Evelyn's perspectives about what it means to be "Polynesian" in Humboldt County on the Zine tab of the website.
Silk Road Junction 101 performs Lahora
Tinku Rahman Abdur improvises on tabla, accompanied by Sarah McClimon on flute. This is an excerpt of their performance of a Lahor on March 27, 2013 at the HSU Pan-Asian Pacific Islander Perspectives festival.
A lahora (literally "wave of sound") is an improvised tabla solo accompanied by a repetitive instrumental pattern. This lahora is based on a four-beat pattern with five-note pentatonic scale.
Sarah McClimon, flutist, kotoist, and singer, grew up in Fortuna. She studied music education at St. Olaf Collage, where she toured with the St. Olaf Band and St. Olaf Cantorei. there, she studied flute with Cynthia Stokes, and earned a Bachelor of Music in instrumental music education. She received her MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from University of Hawaii. She studied Japanese music in Japan for four years with the support of the Japanese Ministry of Education and the Japan Foundation. At Tokyo University of the Arts, she studied koto with Dr. Andö Masateru. Sarah has taught at University of Tsukuba, Japan and the English Language Institute at Humboldt State University. She currently teaches music at Fortuna High School.
Tinku Rahman Abdur, tabla drums, was born in Bangladesh and began studying tabla at the age of six. In 1988 and 1992, he won national awards for tabla performance. From 1994, he studied percussion (tabla, pakhawaj, khole) at Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta, India with the support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, where he was awarded the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music. He studied ethnomusicology in Japan at Tokyo University of the Arts, with a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education, where he earned his MA and PhD in ethnomusicology. He has been an active performer of tabla in Bangladesh for national television, and at diverse performance venues in Japan. He performs with fusion ensemble SqarPeg, and with the Scotia Band. He currently teaches tabla lessons.
They can be contacted for performance and lessons by email at silkroadjunction@gmail.com or at http://sites.google.com/site/silkroadjunction101/.
NON STOP BHANGRA DANCE PARTY ALERT!
What a night! With dance performances by Vicki and Nina, plus dance lessons to get us going, accompanied by live dohl drumming and pumping DJ beats, the bottom floor of the "J" at HSU was a blast with over 160 dancers sweating it out on the dance floor!
Check out the moves they taught us followed by a Bhangra scene of dancers that many Humboldt people will remember for a long time! The next day, people were primed for the dance workshop Nina and Vicki led, still warmed up from the night before!
Tai Ji Qi Gong Workshops at Zane Middle School
Pearl Weng Liang Huang teaches that Qi Gong is life force, and Tai Ji movement is the living form of life's dance harmonizing with nature, which can enhance our energy and maintain physical, emotional and spiritual balance.
The students applied the practice of Tai Ji Qi Gong to their daily activities and how to manage stress, as well as how the Chinese language and movement is self-affirmation of self-love and feeling secure and positive about themselves.
Pearl gave special workshops on Tai Ji Qi Gong to lucky middle schoolers in Humboldt County, March 28, 2013, as part of the Humboldt State University Pan-Asian Pacific Islander Perspectives festival, March 25-30, 2013, hosted by the Asian Pacific Islander American Student Union (A.P.A.S.A.).
Craig Kurumada Taiwanese Bai Nan & Japanese Obon Dance demonstration and lesson
Craig Kurumada performed and taught Taiwanese Bai Nana and Japanese Obon dances on March 26, 2013, at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, as part of the Pan-Asian Pacific Islander Perspectives festival, March 25-30, 2013, hosted by the Asian Pacific Islander American Student Union (A.P.A.S.A.).
Craig teaches that Obon dancing is a part of a mid-summer tradition celebrated in Japan and Japanese communities throughout the world. It has origins in a Buddhist legend, but the dances are mostly secular and deal with activities such as working and fishing, or containing themes relating to nature or regional traditions. Bai Nian is a Taiwanese New Year's Dance. It is symbolic of conveying good wishes to friends and neighbors and hanging good luck banners.
HSU Department of Theatre Film and Dance presents......
On March 25, 2013, the HSU Department of Theatre, Film & Dance kicked off the weeklong Pan-API Perspectives festival at HSU
With performances and lessons in the sunny quad on campus by Fire & Isis Dance Collective Balinese Fusion, Hula dance Emma Cockcroft, & presentations by students of the Dance in World Cultures class, they had students up and dancing to start the week off right.
Here is an excerpt from Emma's Hula class demonstration. Enjoy!