The Colombian Student Association is relocating its annual Colombian Night due to increase in attendance.
This year’s event will take place Saturday at the Paul F. Sharp Concert Hall in Catlett Music Center, after previous years at Meacham Auditorium in the Oklahoma Memorial Union.
“I’ve been waiting for years to have Sharp Hall,” said Yoana Samper de Walschap, Colombian Student Association adviser and treasurer. “We’ve always sold out — we’ve had to leave people outside.”
Attendance has increased every year, she said. Previous events have been so overcrowded the organization needed to set up screens outside Meacham to let overflow watch the presentation.
Pablo Barajas, Colombian Student Association president, said there are 100 meal-and-show tickets and 200 show tickets remaining for Saturday’s event. COLSA is the only Colombian student association in the state and people come from afar for its annual event, he said.
“We’re expecting people from Houston, Dallas, Tulsa and Oklahoma City,” Barajas said. “It motivates us to give more. We put in a lot of time and effort.”
Barajas and Samper de Walschap said the theme for this year’s event is “Amazing Places, Amazing Faces.” Members are to perform dances from all five regions of Colombia: the Amazons, the Andes, the Caribbean coast, the Pacific coast and the Plains.
“We’re showing diversity of our food, of our different aspects of the music [and] of the dances,” Barajas said.
He said 40 percent of COLSA is non-Colombian, with the majority from other Latin American countries, but he said that’s not always the case.
COLSA member Pyone Lwin Muang, 2008 graduate of zoology and biomedical sciences, is Burmese, with Spanish as her third language. Muang said she enjoys dancing and being a part of the organization.
“I love it,” Muang said. “I learned Spanish back in college. This is helping me relearn the language.”
She is expecting to perform a dance from the Caribbean region, made up of three smaller dances: the Bullerengue, the Garabato and the Champeta.
Barajas, a graduate from La Universidad Industrial de Santander, said Colombian Night means more than just the presentation itself; it is a way for COLSA alumni to give back. Scholarships are awarded at the end of the show.
“We’re blessed that we’re here,” Barajas said. “Most of us have a scholarship.”
Samper de Walschap said the scholarship donations increase every year. She said last year, $12,000 in scholarships were awarded to COLSA members, and this year, it will increase to $18,000.
“Colombian Night allows graduates to help OU and help Colombians at OU,” Samper de Walschap said.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
Clauamorocho 2 years, 3 months ago
Colombian Night Promo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipT-2A...