Pageantry and color
at Washington High

By Jeannie O’Sullivan
Times Staff Writer

To Christopher Haynes, M&M’s are more than a tasty snack — they’re a metaphor for George Washington High School.
Reading from his poem, M&M Story, on Jan. 25 in the school’s auditorium, he urged the audience to identify with the multihued candy.
"We all have different backgrounds, different ideas, different goals and different beliefs," said Haynes, a junior. "It’s time for us to put away our differences and start co-existing together as a bag of M&M’s, as one human race."
With students from 55 countries, George Washington is a diverse institution.
So diverse, in fact, that a club formed in the 1970s to acknowledge the multitude of backgrounds in the form of weekly skits in the school library. It evolved into the George Washington Multicultural Show, a student-produced event featuring the dance, music and costumes from nations in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and the Caribbean Islands.
"We’re all kind of pulled into this together," said Bonnie Hughes, the school’s dean of discipline and the show’s longtime director.
The "Parade of Nations," a procession of flags representing all of the nations, provided a fitting launch to the variety of acts that students performed on Jan. 25 and 26. Russian ballroom dancers rhumbaed and salsaed; students of all races shimmied and swiveled through Spanish reggae, Jamaican and Latin routines. Teens-turned-models from India and Pakistan showcased the countries’ regional garb by strutting — runway-style — in beaded scarves and jewel-toned saris.
Talents are as varied as the student-body culture, which composes professional dancers, its own jazz band and dance troupe, the South Asian Cultural Organization, and a football player with a voice like an angel. Demetrius Wilson, the football team’s muscular captain, drew squeals and catcalls during his rendition of the gospel hit, His Eyes on the Sparrow.
"I think I surprised some people," Wilson said.
Markita Payne and Melani DeJesus also proved their vocal brilliance in a duet of the Star-Spangled Banner. Hughes said that having America’s national anthem sung by people of different ethnic backgrounds is a key message in the play.
The diversity within the acts is something dance choreographer Michele Sorkin, a George Washington graduate, said has increased since she participated as a student at the school in the 1990s. She pointed out that a mix of ethnic groups was participating in acts centered on a specific country or nation, rather than one race representing itself.
"It makes it more universal to the audience and participants," Sorkin said.
The students choreographed all of the dances, except for Sorkin’s own segment, Voices of a Soul. The routine intersperses modern dance and ballet, with the 20-member George Washington Dance Ensemble transforming melancholy poses into fluid movements in a somber tribute to Sorkin’s grandfather, a Holocaust victim.
Other segments included a ballet solo by Russian student Olga Podprugina; a sequence known as a capoeria, a fusion of martial arts and gymnastics moves inspired by Brazilian slaves who communicated via these "fighter" dances; and an old school/new school face-off that evoked the ’80s-era origins of hip-hop, tracing its evolution in both sound and movement.
Hughes has directed 20 shows since joining George Washington in 1975. This year, her faculty colleagues performed the grand finale — a jitterbug dance that generated a huge roar of applause and screeches.
"After all," Hughes said, "I thought we should throw in a little American culture." ••
Reporter Jeannie O’Sullivan can be reached at 215-354-3038 or osullivanj@phillynews.com