Annual world arts and cultures showcase WACsmash! features undergraduate student performances of diverse mediums

When he’s on the stage, third-year world arts and culture student Kenji Igus speaks with his shoes.

Igus, a tap dancer, along with 14 of his undergraduate peers, will be showcasing his choreography at the 11th annual WACsmash! with four free performances from Friday through Sunday.

WACsmash! is an entirely student-run production that showcases the choreographic and artistic abilities of the undergraduate world arts and cultures department. This year’s production will feature performances in many different art mediums, including dance, spoken word and fine art.

It was originally created because students wanted the chance to create and perform their own original ideas.

“Surprisingly, WACsmash! is one of the few cases where we have the opportunity to say “˜What do I want to do?’ and “˜What is important to me?’ and express that in a concrete show,” Igus said.

The show is very well-known among the WAC department and typically draws a great deal of interest from the student body. After submitting an application detailing their idea, potential candidates are chosen by the producers. After the first cutoff, the selected artists have a chance to present their ideas in person.

“People you want to see more of come in and show us whatever they want to show us, whether it be choreography or music,” said Victor Cordon, a fourth-year world arts and cultures and global studies student, who is also a producer for this year’s show. “We can ask questions and have a conversation back and forth with them about what they want to do. From there, we choose the artists.”

For the participants,the show will be the realization of months of hard work. The process involved in creating a piece for WACsmash! is different from the process that WAC students go through for their normal class assignments.

“You are working for an extended duration of time to actualize an idea that you’ve had for a while,” said Alexandra Mathews, a fourth-year world arts and cultures student, who has previously participated in the showcase and is one of this year’s producers. “A lot of the choreography classes are weekly or bi-weekly assignments, but this is literally hashing at something for four months, which can be hell but is also unbelievably fulfilling.”

Unlike previous years, this year’s WACsmash! show will have no intermission, creating what the producers said they hope to be a more intimate and meaningful show.

“What’s great about this show is that there’s a lot of people trying to break expectations of not only themselves, but also of what art can do,” Cordon said.

Igus said he hopes to defy expectations with his tap performance.

“Using tap, I want to show the voice of an artist and what you say when you tap,” Igus said. “My piece takes place in a train station setting to kind of represent the voices of everybody. You feel like you’re one small voice among thousands, or millions, or billions, and then we hone in on me and see what I’m saying. It represents the relationship between voice and rhythm.”

Maxine Schoefer-Wulf is a fourth-year world arts and cultures student with a concentration in cultural studies whose series of drawings will be displayed as part of the show.

“My drawings are mostly colored pencil and charcoal pieces that explore the concept of aging in Western society and how aging is considered more of a disease than anything else these days,” Schoefer-Wulf said. “I compare men and women in aging and pose the question of whether everyone in society is allowed to age equally.”

The producers said that sharing the artists’ process and ideas with other people is what makes WACsmash! meaningful.

“We hope that the audience and the artists realize that it’s not always about what can be captured in one night,” Mathews said. “It’s about what you see beyond that and the emotional, physical and mental journey that the creative process entails.”