Monday night the Student Organization of Latinos (SOL) in collaboration with Jam Rock performed their Day of the Dead show. Participants of the show portrayed stories of Hispanic culture through modeling, dance and performance.
There were a total of nine stories in the entirety of the show with an intermission performance from Jam Rock. The stories ranged from creation stories to the queen of the underworld. Each story had a main model with other supporting models.
The Day of the Dead show is an annual SOL production that invites different people with various cultural and ethnic backgrounds to come together and create an entertaining and educational event.
Emily Abreu Carbajal, President of SOL and senior environmental geoscience major and Spanish professional minor, has been involved with SOL and their Day of the Dead production for four years.
Previously Carbajal had been a model for the event from her freshman into junior year. Sophomore year, she helped set up for the event whenever she could, and junior year, she lent her hand as a makeup artist. This year as president, Carbajal said she delegated the responsibilities for the event while taking care of the models, artists and face paint.
“Being from New York City, I decided to join SOL my freshman year in October because it was the first time, I met anyone with the same ethnic background as I since beginning school that August,” Carbajal explained.
Carbajal was just moments away from submitting her application to the University of Delaware to transfer but saw a poster board for SOL on SlipperyRockU’s Snapchat for their involvement fair coverage and decided to give the university another shot.
“I also joined SOL because of the members of the organization. Now alumni, Aaron Carr, Lauren Hernandez and Cat Burton were very welcoming and friendly, and I knew I wanted to be that difference in someone’s life,” Carbajal said.
To prepare for the show, SOL held bi-weekly practices on Tuesday and Thursday. The models would learn their music, choreography, poses, costumes and run through their story.
“[The] most difficult part of preparing for the show was making sure everyone is attending or the right amount of people are attending per story,” Carbajal said. “If two out of five members of a story show up, then that group cannot practice.”
Aisha Aldubayan, senior digital media production major and film & media studies minor was a model in the show.
This was Aldubayan’s first year participating in the Day of the Dead production. Aldubayan said that for the past three years she has watched the show from the audience, but because this was her senior year and she loves Hispanic culture, she wanted to be involved with the show.
“My favorite part of the show was definitely walking the stage in front of a full audience,” Aldubayan said. “It felt empowering and it was the moment that we have been practicing for three weeks.”
Students don’t have to be Latino, Hispanic or part of SOL to participate in the Day of the Dead show.
“SOL bring nothing but family into our love and we would love to grow,” Carbajal said.
The next general body meeting for SOL will be held on Nov. 26 at 6:30 p.m. in room 324 in the Smith Student Center. If you want to learn more and stay up to date on SOL, you can follow them on Twitter @SRUSOL or on Instagram @sru_sol.
