One Pulse: Event to showcase multicultural dance groups on campus

While the moves, music and meanings vary, dance itself is universal, an integral part of cultures all over the world.

One Pulse, a multicultural dance showcase, will give the Binghamton University community a chance to experience global cultures firsthand — and even taste them with free ethnic food offered after the show. The event will be held at 4 p.m. April 11 in the Anderson Center of the Performing Arts’ Chamber Hall; tickets, available online, are $10 for students, $12 for faculty, staff and alumni, and $15 for the general public.

Campus dance groups typically perform on their own; this showcase presents the first University-organized opportunity to perform together, said Lakshmi Bulathsinghala, who came up with the idea for the show.

“It has been with me for some time now, and I am so glad that it comes to life this year,” she said. “One Pulse highlights the fundamental idea that we all are the same in an interdependent community and in a global world; when multicultural differences come together, it creates intercultural harmony that makes us feel that we are different but similar at the same time. That is ‘One Pulse’ for us!”

An instructor in the Theatre Department who is an interdisciplinary scholar-artist, Bulathsinghala crosslists her courses with Asian and Asian American Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is a noted performing artist in her native Sri Lanka, and both an active scholar and an artist.

Groups scheduled to perform include Bing Irish Dance, Major Noir, Desi KalaKaar, the Evolution Dance Company, Unkai Daiko, Collision, the Kung Fu Club, X-Fact’r, and Binghamton Bhangra.

The program is sponsored by the Theatre Department, the School of the Arts, the Multicultural Resource Center, Student Affairs, the Center for Theatre Arts Collaboration, the Ellyn Uram Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls, and Campus Life. Supporting departments and programs also include Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, the Translation Research and Instruction Program, Romance Languages, Art History, Art and Design, Music, Philosophy, History, English, Human Rights, German and Russian Studies, Cinema, and Digital Studies. Collaborative support was provided by private individuals, as well as Royal Indian Bar and Grill and Los Tapatios.

Among the performers is first-year integrative neuroscience major Shreya Soni. While she hasn’t yet had the opportunity to join an official campus dance group, she has studied multiple dance forms and is eager to share her art.

“Having been a dancer my entire life, I was excited to engage with something so familiar, but from a new perspective,” said Soni, also a member of the event’s organizing committee. “This experience allows me to contribute to dance not just as a performer, but as someone helping shape the event itself.”

Fellow committee member Vidhi Naik, a sophomore biological sciences major, said she appreciates the fact that One Pulse gives regular students the opportunity to perform, even for those who are not a part of official performance groups.

“Dance is a universal language, and no matter what you can or cannot understand, performance transcends these barriers and connects everyone from every culture,” reflected Tejasree Narisetty, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law who also serves on the organizing committee. “Appreciating cultural differences is imperative to understanding one another.”