The Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) put on their annual Café con Leche on Oct. 22 in Langford Auditorium. The event featured a variety of Latin American folk dances and cross-culture performances, all with breathtaking stage production.
While the showcase generally occurs in the spring, this year’s showcase was held close to Día de los Muertos, with the theme “Amor y Muerte” (love and death), and was included as part of ALAS’s Latin American and Hispanic History Month programming.
Between performances, ALAS presented a playful intermittent video about cultural experiences, spiritual journeys and friendships that laced the showcase together. The vlog celebrated the individuality within and diversity between a multitude of cultural identities.
While the Café performances mainly showcased the complex and vibrant culture of Latin America, it also invited other cultural organizations on campus. Hip-hop dance group VIBE, South Asian dance group Bhangradores and opera singer Justin Colon are among the people who came to share the Café stage. These guest acts brought talents from around campus to create a lineup from diverse backgrounds and styles. All of these groups distinctly embodied the artistic expressiveness found in cultures around the world.
The showcase closed with a message for the audience: Focus on the journey instead of the destination and enjoy life to its full extent. As conveyed by the show’s theme, death—which is often thought of as life’s endpoint—is not a scary prospect if one makes a meaningful and everlasting journey out of their life. The aforementioned video similarly emphasized that, despite different cultures’ varying perspectives about the afterlife, we should live life to the fullest and venture onto every experience it provides.
