Zoe Marie Zapanta / Asst. A&C Editor

As we reach the halfway point of the semester, it is important to destress from midterms and remember why we are here at USD and what we love about our community. This past Saturday, USD’s College of Arts and Sciences presented the third annual Arts and Culture Festival. The festival celebrates the creativity and imagination that is at the heart of USD.

The event was held in the Camino/Founders Courtyard and featured a diverse array of live music, dance, theater, visual arts, creative writing and crafts from across the community. The festival had performances across three different stages to capture the uniqueness of each performer’s exhibition. From traditional Aztec dancing, to beautiful musical renditions from the music department’s different ensembles, the festival was a celebration and spotlight of all the different things that art is and can be.

One of the featured performances was a cultural dance from USD’s Folklórico and Mariachi Association. The group performed a traditional Folklórico dance, with their specific dance originating from Jalisco, Mexico, that featured a group of dancers with brightly colored skirts, embroidered jackets and hats dancing to a lively beat.

USD junior Maya Rothwell shared what it means to her to perform this dance in the festival.

“It’s important to me to spread our culture, as a Mexican American,” Rothwell said. “Dance has brought me closer to my Mexican heritage and traditions, and to be able to share that out here amongst all these other people who are sharing their own cultures is an important and beautiful thing.”

Many of the performances in the festival were featured in previous years, but a new edition to the lineup of performers was Ensemble X. Ensemble X is USD’s new experimental ensemble, focusing on contemporary trends in sound art, storytelling and performance. USD first- year Max Ready gave more detail about what the group and their performance is all about. 

“Our piece that we performed is called ‘Anti Axis’ and it considers the vocal qualities of speech and deconstructing music within performance arts,” Ready said. “It is all about performer and audience interaction. This is the first time we are performing it, but as a group I definitely think we benefit more by having a relationship with the audience to change our performance, since it is all experimental vocals.” 

Another performer in the festival was USD’s hip hop dance crew, Less Than Three (LT3). The dance crew prides themselves on being welcoming to people of all different backgrounds in dance and is rooted in love, family and a passion for dance. President of LT3, USD senior Madi Calderon, shared what makes the arts, especially dance, so important to her.

“Arts help you express yourself in so many different ways, from love to anger,” Calderon said. “It can be scary to come to a new place, especially college. USD as an institution is majority white, but our dance crew is so diverse with our different groups of minorities, and having LT3 as a safe space has helped us become more comfortable to express ourselves freely through dance and as people.”

The Arts and Culture Festival at USD’s College of Arts and Sciences embodied the spirit of creativity and diversity that defines our community. It served as a reminder of the importance of expression and community and highlighted the power of art to connect people across cultures. Events like these can be a source of inspiration and a testament to the experiences that make USD a special place.