Inter­na­tional Night:

Gallery of Dreams

Justice High School’s Inter­na­tional Night took place on Febru­ary 28^th, 2024, at 6:30 pm. This is an annual event designed to high­light the unique diver­sity of students and teach­ers at Justice. The night was filled with capti­vat­ing perfor­mances from several coun­tries and a fash­ion show dedi­cated to Justice’s multi­cul­tural world. 

To open the show, Assis­tant Prin­ci­pal Daniel Rodriguez guided the audi­ence into Justice’s Gallery of Dreams. With vari­ous wings titled admi­ra­tion, compas­sion, unity, and change, the presen­ta­tion took strong measures to embrace the ethnic mosaic formed by Justice’s student body. “Here at Justice, we repre­sent approx­i­mately 61 coun­tries and 52 differ­ent languages around the world,” Rodriguez states, “Despite our differ­ent cultural back­grounds, we have created strong and respect­ful rela­tion­ships with each other.” 

The first wing, or theme, of the perfor­mance was the Wing of Admi­ra­tion, where the fash­ion show began. Student models repre­sent­ing Bangladesh walk onto stage in the tradi­tional Pakistani cloth­ing for women and men, shal­war kameez. The men present an ensem­ble known as a ghagra choli; or shal­war kameez suits. Follow­ing Bangladesh’s perfor­mance, students repre­sent­ing Bolivia took the stage. Models high­lighted the special occa­sion attire, with women wear­ing dresses with sandals called an Abar­cas, and a hat. The men wore an under­shirt, pants, jack­ets, sandales, and a hard helmet hat. 

China graced the stage third, model­ing the Chinese Zooboo — a reversible jacket worn for spring festi­vals and some­times weddings. The Zooboo is inter­change­able, as it can be casual or formal, historic or modern. Moving forward in the perfor­mance, Ethiopia and Eritrea entered the stage. Students modeled the tradi­tional attire of Habe­sha women, the kemis/zuria — a white, hand-woven mate­r­ial made from Shemma, an Ethiopian cotton. Models also present the ankle length dress commonly worn by Ethiopian and Eritrean women at formal events, holi­days, and at church. Follow­ing the sequence, Greece presented layers and dimen­sions created through skirts, tops, scarves, and belts. The models presented regional exam­ples, as they differ in style comparatively. 

Next, Honduras presented a tradi­tional dress that is often made up of a beige, cotton fabric, with small color­ful details on the shoul­ders and end of the dress. The models wear braided hair with color­ful ribbon to repre­sent the color­ful and trop­i­cal envi­ron­ment of Honduras. 

Morocco followed, display­ing the Takshita, a tradi­tional women’s garment worn for cele­bra­tions and more specif­i­cally, weddings. A Takshita is made up of 2 pieces, the first layer being the “Tahtia,” a fine ornately deco­rated fabric.

Nubia and Sudan followed. Women graced the stage in the Sudanese dress known as a thoub or toub. The toub is a long piece of cloth wrapped around the body, looped over the head, and tossed over the right shoul­der. Next, models repre­sent­ing Sudan displayed the loose-fitting, long attire common for Sudanese people.

Next to last, the Philip­pines capti­vated the audi­ence with the presen­ta­tion of a Barong. A Barong is the tradi­tional cloth­ing for men in the Philip­pines. Women display the Baro’t saya, a tradi­tional dress ensem­ble that tradi­tion­ally consists of four parts: a blouse, a long skirt, a kerchief over the shoul­ders, and a short rectan­gu­lar cloth worn over the skirt. 

Finally, models showed off the tradi­tional fash­ion of Viet­nam. The national dress is known as the ao dài — a long, split silk tunic worn with pants primar­ily by women. Ao dài is worn during special occa­sions such as Tết, new year cele­bra­tions, and weddings. 

The night contin­ued on into the Wing of Compas­sion, where students performed dances from central and south Amer­ica. Bolivia performed an ener­getic dance that blew the audi­ence away.  Junior Josce­lyn Jimenez states, “I’m perform­ing for Bolivia this year and we’ve been stay­ing after school a lot from around 3–5 to get the dance down. I’ve been danc­ing all my life and I’m excited to get to show off my culture to people in the commu­nity! Our hard work and dedi­ca­tion has paid off and our pride is shown through our dancing.” 

 The stage sparkled with the rhymes and cultural tradi­tions special to the island of Martinique and other vari­ous hispanic cultures. The Wing of Accep­tance came third, high­light­ing the sounds of Asia and Europe. Pakistan, Viet­nam, Philip­pines, Korea, France, and Greece, performed capti­vat­ing inter­pre­tive dances. 

The final wing in the dance perfor­mance was the Wing of Unity. Here, students cele­brated the rhyth­mic music from Africa with visits to Soma­lia, Congo, Sudan and Nubia, and Ethiopia and Eritrea. Students appear­ing on behalf of Nubia and Sudan waved the flags of Sudan and Pales­tine during their dance. Sopho­more Retal Mohammed explains, “I brought the Sudanese flag to repre­sent Sudan and I was inspired to wave it in order [to] bring more aware­ness about what’s going on in Sudan.” 

The thir­teen minute perfor­mance by Ethiopia and Eritrea was the one to end the show on such an amaz­ing note. They had their show divided into eleven tribes and ended their perfor­mance with enter­ing the crowd, result­ing in abrupt cheers in every seat. “It was fun because we prac­ticed a lot. It was nice to see all our hard work come to fruition,” said Senior Nebah Adem, a dancer repre­sent­ing Ethiopia and Eritrea. At the end of the ener­getic perfor­mance, all perform­ers entered the stage in cele­bra­tion. Students on stage began to chant, “Free Pales­tine,” in unity. “I was inspired by the Sudanese perfor­mance because they dedi­cated part of their perfor­mance to dedi­cat­ing coun­tries such as Pales­tine and Sudan and I thought it was the perfect moment to speak up,” noted Adem. 

BEHIND THE DESIGN:

Co-chairs of the Inter­na­tional Night plan­ning commit­tee Eliz­a­beth Buffen­barger, French Language Teacher, and Theresa Cummings, Learn­ing Disabil­i­ties Teacher, created the inspired theme for this year’s inter­na­tional night: Gallery of Dreams. The goal was to encap­su­late the audi­ence into an art gallery; with four differ­ent wings repre­sent­ing differ­ent coun­tries and their unique culture. 

After decid­ing on a theme, the plan­ning commit­tee begins creat­ing a script. Before this is possi­ble, they must settle on their over­ar­ch­ing goals for the perfor­mance.  “What is the message that we wanna share this year? What’s the focus? It’s kind of like coming up with a thesis for a paper. Then, we can build every­thing else around it,” Buffen­barger describes. . 

From then on, student input and commit­ment is neces­sary for the success of the perfor­mance. The plan­ning commit­tee begins reach­ing out to students that might be inter­ested in involve­ment in the subcom­mit­tees. The subcom­mit­tees special­ize in differ­ent aspects of the event: perfor­mances, the fash­ion show, adver­tise­ment, deco­ra­tion, the cultural show­case, and food. Commu­ni­ca­tion is at the foun­da­tion of this event. “The biggest part of our job is just constantly the follow through,” Buffen­barger added, “just to touch base with them, always commu­ni­cat­ing constantly.” 

Addi­tion­ally, each coun­try meets regu­larly after school to chore­o­graph and prac­tice their routine for Inter­na­tional Night. These students display a relent­less amount of deter­mi­na­tion; all chal­lenges are over­come and worth it by the end of the night as cheers fill the auditorium.

It is the hope that this Inter­na­tional Night will prompt cele­bra­tion of the diverse culture at Justice. “We are in a very unique situ­a­tion,” Buffen­berger acknowl­edges, “We need to respect where every­body comes from, even though we’re all differ­ent. […] We’re all still human beings.”