UWM celebrated the end of its countdown to Asian American Pacific Islander Month (AAPI) observed in May, a month dedicated to celebrating the heritage, contributions and history of Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians.
The AAPI Heritage Celebration welcomed the community to celebrate Asian culture. Attendees enjoyed dance performances from various culture such as Hula, k-pop, traditional Hmong dance and a Dandiya Raas dance. Additionally, the event had an embroidery station, garba stick decorating, used to create rhythms during Dandiya Raas, a traditional Indian folk dance, and designing tinikling jewelry, accessories worn during the traditional Philippine dance, tinikling.
Bhavana Tumakuru Mahesh performed a bharatanatyam dance, a Indian classical dance form, and connected it to well-being since she has been working in Student Health and Wellness Center for over a year.
She talks about how dance is connected to mental and physical health because of the amount of energy and emotions put into it. Not just for the dancer, but also the viewer as well.
“Whenever we perform the emotions we try to portray, we will be secreting the D.O.S.E neurotransmitters like dopamine, seratonin, oxitocin, and endorphins,” said Mahesh.
Each performance can go into a wide variety of topics and the emotions portrayed depends on how the persona is feeling. In the bharatanatyam dance, the female lead digs deep into the emotion of the character she is portraying, as does the male counterpart. For the closing ceremony, Mahesh performed a composition and presented how she feels the composer felt for it.
She has attended multiple of UWM’s events for AAPI month and says she is excited about being celebrated on campus and sharing her culture.
“I feel like this is giving me a feel of community because I’m an international student,” said Mahesh. “Being here to perform the dance which I learned from my childhood is giving me a good feeling of belonging to the UWM community.”
The event was lined with local vendors selling art prints, jewelry and essential oils. At one booth, Mrinal Gokhale shares “Taboo,” an anthology of South Asian Mental Health Stories.
Gokhale is a writer based in Wisconsin. She recently published her second book where she asked people of South Asian descent to write about their experiences navigating mental illness, neurodivergence, identity, culture, sexuality, trauma, and other taboo topics. Participants are currently living in the United States, India, Canada and the United Kingdom.
She says she was drawn to the UWM’s AAPI celebration because it is also Mental Health Awareness Month. The collection highlights individuals from all parts of South Asia to emphasize the wide range of similarities and differences amongst each other.
“As you read the book, you’ll find that there’s common themes that bond the stories together as people in the South Asian diaspora, but also nuances that seperate them based the religious group, the cultural group, the self-group that you come from,” said Gokhale.