12 Centerspread
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The Smoke Signal
MSJ’s Multicultural Assembly took place on Friday, March 17 after a week of delicious, cultural food fundraising. Relive the exciting performances through the photos and voices from each talented group. *The quotes were collected in advance, so they refer to Multicultural Week in future tense.
By Grace Dong, Sayan Ghosh, Apoorva Rajanala & Ruiwen Shen Staff Writers
Friday, May 1, 2015
Friday, May 1, 2015
The Smoke Signal
Link Vos, 11
“Working with these girls has been such an amazing experience. We really bonded and became a family. We became close enough that we even had our occasional fights but it was all worth it in the end. I would like to thank each and every one of them for making this MC special.” -Meixuan Qu, 10
Ricky Chu, 12
Sonam Bhuptani (11), Meera Patel (12), Kathy Liu (12), Samantha Lin (12), Aashna Shah (11), Shubha Jagannatha (10), Annaliese Lemler (12), Saumya Arora (12), Asmita Gaggar (9), Abirami Murugappan (12), Tulsi Patel (9), Aarushi Agrawal (9), Maya Krishnan, 12, Shreya Atitkar (11), Nitya Vakil (10), Tulika Mohanti (10), Chelsy Simran (11), Rashi Ambashta (11), Pratibha Jagannatha (12), Kanika Rao (9), Keval Parikh (10), Rudrik Suthar (11), Shourya Jain (11), Anish Shourie (10), Srinath Gopalakrishnan (11), Pranav Swaminathan (12), Joshua Cade Nauman (12)
“It was a great experience working with people we don’t normally practice with. Although it was hard finding something that worked for everyone, we eventually pulled through and performed above our expectations. I can’t wait to see what we can come up for next year!” -Jemmy Zhou, 10
“The most rewarding part of being in charge of an MC performance is seeing how much effort everyone puts into making the dance live up to its full potential. Seeing everything come together the way we imagined it is an inexplicable feeling and we’re so glad to be dancing with a group of 20 amazing new friends.” -Sonam Bhuptani, 11
Benjamin Wang (10), April Huang (10), Hanlin Wang (10), and Michelle Zhang (10) “Our actual quartet name is the “IVivo Quartet” since IV is roman numeral 4, and vivo is musical terminology for lively! Our act at MC Week will be “Evolution of Music,” and our quartet members are Benjamin Wang, April Huang, Hanlin Wang, and me (Michelle Zhang). We’re all sophomores. Our performance is a short rendition of how music evolved through the history of mankind, from the classic “Greensleeves” tune to today’s “Rather Be.” we arranged all of these pieces ourselves and try to give equal melody opportunities to everyone!” -Michelle Zhang, 10
Hanlin Wang, 10
Claire Lin, 10
Hannah Folk (12), Catherine Hou (12), Meixuan Qu (10), Amanda Wang (10), Emily Chang (9), Iris Bai (9)
“So we have always practiced every Friday covering artists that we aspire to become. You know, we tried to participate in any school events that we can, whether it was for HC, MC or club events. We practice regardless of upcoming events just for our enjoyment.” -Jihwan Seo, 12
“It was kind of difficult diverging off of our hip hop roots to put together a more “cultural” performance but we were able to incorporate it pretty well and had a great performance!” -Sagar Samantarai, 12
Shenlum Tang (12), Daniel Jean (12), Melissa Chin (11), Alyssa Lo (10), Jemmy Zhou (10), Wallace Lim (9), Jasmine Syu (9)
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Jihwan Seo (12), Ricky Chu (12), Jason Stiltz (12), Junsong Kim (12), Albert Chang (12)
“The assembly was super fun and it was exciting to perform for everyone! It was also bittersweet because it’s Sagar and Steve’s last year. I’m really gonna miss them.” -Nishir Shelat, 11
Andy Zhou, 10
“This year it’s me, Kathy Liu, Samantha Lin, and Claire Wu. We actually decided to perform actual ballet variations this year, because we felt that it represented ballet better. Last year we choreographed our own, and even though it worked out, we really wanted to show people what true classical ballet looks like. This is an important year to us because as you saw, three of us out of the four in our group are seniors, so this will be the last year we perform. It’s pretty sad to us, because ballet will most likely not be performing next year. We already had a hard time finding dancers this year. Personally, this performance is really important to me because Sam and Kathy are both majoring in dance, but I’m not. I’m quitting at the end of May, so this will be one of my last performances! I’m really hoping it turns out well.” -Deborah Chew, 12
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Steve Yung (12), Sagar Samantarai (12), Liang Kuan Lee (11), Nishir Shelat (11), Timothy Chen (11), Justin Lau (10)
Laura Chen (12), Katherine Liu (12), Allisa Tran (12), Jamin Chen (11), Brian Chou (11), Liang Kuan Lee (11), Elliot Suh (11), Christine Wu (11), Andy Zhou (10), Emily Jean (9) “For the last two months we’ve been working on an original KPop medley I arranged for Multicultural Week. We see MC Week as our opportunity to go all out and we plan to transition from a slow acoustic serenade to full-on acapella. Kathy put together some choreography and we started Spring Break by thrift shopping together for our Kpop outfits. We’re pretty hyped.” -Laura Chen, 12
Katherine Liu (12), Samantha Lin (12), Deborah Chew (12), Claire Lin (10)
Jemmy Zhou, 10
Meera Patel (12), Amrin Khurana (12), Mina Afnan (12), Asmita Gaggar (12), Mansi Shah (12), Pratibha Jagannatha (12), Madeline Fajilan (12), Jessica Helder (12), Abirami Murugappan (12), Rose Chang (12), Cari Gan (12), Arvindh Natarajan (12), Yash Bisen (12), Mudit Mittal (12), Arsalon Pirzada (12), Pranay Hegde (12), Vayum Arora (12), Hershal Bhatia (12), Dustin Chiang (12), Anuj Desai (12), Pranav Swaminathan (12), Adithya Jayachandran (12)* “Satisfying my freshman year dream of being Senior Bhangra captain was one of the best experiences of high school. After months of happiness, struggles, and exhaustion, we killed it out there in the assemblies, and I love that I got to meet some great people on my team as a side benefit! I miss it already! Go class of 2015!” -Harpaul Hari, 12 *Principle dancers listed. Thanks to all the seniors who joined in!
Hannah Folk, 12
Hershal Bhatia, 12
Mansi Chopra (12), Roma Modi (9), Riya Modi (9), Meera Patel (12), Shubhreet Bains (10), Shreya Hegde (9), Nitya Vakil (10), Rose Chang (12), Mansi Shah (12), Jasmine Mehta (9), Neha Saxena (10), Tulika Mohanti (10), Alisha Matharu (12), Rashi Ambashta (11), Saumya Arora (12), Jennifer Chin (12), Annaliese Lemler (12), Arvindh Natarajan (12), Arsalon Pirzada (12), Allen Hsiao (12), Zach Kekoa (12), Ayush Gaggar (9), Mihir Baya (9), Mudit Mittal (12), Mohan Saxena (12) “Leading MC Bollywood and Senior Bhangra will no doubt be one of my best memories of high school because watching my teams putting so much effort in the performance and improving every week, made my experience as a leader even better. They are the reason why we managed to pull off good performances as a team.” Tulika Mohanti, 10 -Mansi Chopra, 12
Psychology and World History Teacher Carl Hui
Annie Lee (12), Adam Schaps (12), Samantha Lin (12), Denise Chan (12), Amber Chen (12), Stephanie Lee (12), Kush Patel (12), Allen Hsiao (12), , Matt Jin (12), Ben Nguyen (12), Arthur Lin (12), Jay Menon (12), Ehmer Jafar (12), Maya Rajan (12), Rahul Dayal (12), Rashi Ambashta (11), Heather Wang (11), Nicole Li (11), Joy Feng (10), and Raymond Yin (9) “Being in Tinikling for the past three years has been incredibly difficult practicing for countless hours, working on perfecting the routine when there are so many members a part of it. I think aside from the struggles we face, the best part about an experienm ce like this is bonding with 19 other people who are working towards the same goal. The dance itself is extremely tiring, as the sticks we use are made of bamboo and the routine is constant, nonstop movement, increasing speed throughout the entire thing and so we come across a few injuries at times too. Besides the physical aspect of putting this dance together, teamwork is the most essential part that makes Tinikling ‘Tinikling’, since missing only one person makes a huge difference in the dance as a whole. We hope you enjoy the hours of hard work we have put into this performance!” -Annie Lee, 12 Ehmer Jafar, 12
Mattie Fajilan (12) , Jessica Helder (12), Amrin Khurana (12), Cari Gan (12), Andrew Xu (12), Mina Afnan (12), Natalie Sin (11), Christopher Kwok (11), Julie Kim (11), Rashi Ambashta (11), Sophia Huang (10), Anthony Bowser (10), Rosabel Wu (9) “MC hip hop was absolute insanity with 7 AM practices, teaching new choreo a few days before the performance, and doing our best not to goof off (often without success), but it was so worth it. We loved how we had students from all four grades who otherwise would probably never have talked to each other, but we have come together for our love of dance, and have become so close. The feeling you get when you finish performing and you know that you all -Mattie Fajilan, 12 killed it is like nothing Jessica Helder, 12 else in the world.” Amrin Khurana, 12
Rashi Ambashta, 11
Katherine Liu (12), Sebin Yoon (12), Catherine Ha (12), Gelsey Plaza (12), Spencer Whaley (12), Brett Whaley (12), Tiffany Huang (12), Lara Khamisy (12) , Hairol Ma (12), Ian Park (12), Michelle Chen (12), Albert Chang (12), Vincent Ding (12), Katherine Tsay (12), Soukhya Inamdar (11), Abhay Dewan (11), Rohan Panuganti (11), Erica Mao (11), Lois Zhou (11), Ajitesh Vedula (11), Jamin Chen (11), Rishiv Chugh (10), Matthew Lee (10), Ashlesha Sathe (10)
Kaylyn Arima (12), Sydney Hiroto (12), Adrienne Peng (12), Sean Li (12), Twan Sia (10), Hayley Arima (10) “We practiced every Saturday morning using practice drums made of tires and clear packaging tape. All our music is live/ no pre-recorded music. The new people were Twan and Adrienne. Overall, it was a fun experience. I really enjoyed teaching Taiko to the new members and seeing our final piece come together! I look forward to doing it next year (hopefully!)” -Hayley Arima, 10
Teacher Carl Hui
Sydney Hiroto, 12
“We’ve worked hard to perfect this performance as much as we can. We hope you appreciate the song’s beauty and brightness - representative of the island we sing of.” -Catherine Ha, 12
Jared Pingue (9), Jessica Kim (9), Claire Mi (9); Mackenzie Lim (10), Tanuj Kalakuntla (10), Christopher Kwok (11), Charles Han (11), Daniel Chiao (12), Bryant Chin (12), Abigail Wong (12) “We’re here to represent Taekwondo and Korean culture as well as our school, Mach Martial Arts.” -Chris Kwok, 11 “Personally, it means something to us, the leaders because we have been given the honor to lead this team by our seniors.” -Charles Han, 11
Ian Park, 12 Abigail Wong, 12 photos by GRAPHICS EDITOR KEVIN CHEN AND staff writers GRACE DONG, RUIWEN SHEN