Video coverage of Stuyvesant’s 2009 Culture Festival.

“Give me that beat boys, give me that flow. Let me live within the rhythm, let me free my soul.” The closing lyrics of Magnetic North’s “Within the Rhythm” presented the perfect conclusion to the technically troubled but innovative 2009 Culture Fest.

“This is the first Culture Fest that’s actually not just Asian so there are other things like Irish dancing and Indian dancing,” junior and Culture Fest producer Aia Sarykcheva said. Culture Fest 2009, executively produced by seniors Xiangyu Xie, Nicole Leung and Tasnima Mohaimin and produced by Sarytcheva and seniors Ruthia Chen and Derrick Fung, was the first culture festival to place more emphasis on non-East Asian cultures. “So basically we want [to show] that there’s a lot more diversity to Stuyvesant than meets the eye,” Sarykcheva said.

The Culture Fest, which took place on Tuesday, November 24, began with a meal. Crowds of eager students huddled around the cafeteria doors, tickets in hand, waiting for doors to open. “We got some students to provide [the food] through ARISTA. But mostly we ordered from restaurants like Pan Latin and a lot of restaurants from Little Italy and Chinatown,” Sarykcheva said.

“This year we ordered food from Bengali, Indian, Vietnamese, Latin and Italian restaurants,” Mohaimin said. “The food also stayed warm since we ran to receive it 30 minutes prior to the buffet.”

Each culture had its own table with a variety of representative foods. While some of the more represented tables, like the Bengali and Chinese ones, offered numerous dishes, others like the Hebrew table included a rather meager display. Students who attended the 2008 culture festival noticed a stark difference in the food’s quality. “Compared to last year’s, I don’t think [the food] was that great,” junior and Culture Fest performer Carmen Shum said.

The feast, set to start at 4:30 p.m., actually began 20 minutes later. Performers ate their meals inside the cafeteria while restless students, parents and alumni waited impatiently. “When the performers were done eating they were already starting to run out on food,” Shum said.

After the feast, the show began around 6:30 p.m. The African Step, Peacock and Tamil dances were some of the most impressive acts. The Step dance forewent fancy costumes and distracting music, highlighting the dance’s beautiful coordination and the rhythmic beat that complemented it. The Chinese Peacock Dance, performed by Stacy Wang (’07), former winner of the Miss New York Chinese beauty pageant, was a beautiful rendition of a popular Chinese dance that is supposed to emulate the sophistication and grace of a peacock. The Tamil dance featured Indian-styled arm movements, including an intricate formation at the beginning of the dance that imitated the thousand-armed Hindu goddess. In addition to dance performances, there were also musical acts, including a piano battle, a Chinese duet and an Indian solo.

“What’s amazing was that they [the step dancers] didn’t have any music on, or none that I can remember,” sophomore Reema Panjwani said. “But we could clearly hear the rhythm of their steps with their claps and slaps.”

Some performers felt that this year’s show was a tremendous improvement on last year’s. “I feel like it’s more organized,” sophomore and performer Ria Malhotra said. “Last time, I was just a dancer and didn’t know what was going on until the last day.”

The festival, however, was not without its errors and lackluster performances. The “Fashion Show,” an attempt at exhibiting “cultural styles,” was mediocre at best. Pieces were fashionable, but modern imitations rather than authentic cultural pieces. The Irish Step dance was entirely uncoordinated. Perhaps most problematically, the microphones malfunctioned, making the introductions and the fashion show barely audible.

Despite the technical problems and dancing slip-ups, this year’s culture festival was the most diverse yet and set a new tone for future festivals to follow. “I just want them to know about cultures and that we should respect them,” junior and performer Ronjini Hassan said. “This is just a way for all of us to come together and find out about each other’s backgrounds.”