Alex Lindo

Members of the Hispanic Heritage Show take a group photo with teacher coordinator, Mrs. Amaguayo, along with the different flags of Hispanic countries.

  Last week, Millbrook celebrated Hispanic culture with a “Hispanic Heritage Show” dedicated to highlighting different Latin cultures. Though there were several technical difficulties, the audience remained engaged and members of the show were able to persevere and deliver an entertaining show. 

  The Hispanic Heritage Show included different styles of traditional dancing, a meaningful poetry reading by Cynthia Rubi-Garcia, and a performance from the Hispanic Heritage Band. While they were able to perform they also faced multiple technical challenges, from audio malfunctioning to last minute performance additions. 

  “We’ve been practicing since the beginning of the school year. The Heritage 1 classes are new to each other, so it takes time to build that community to feel connected, a place where they belong. Whereas my Heritage 2 classes are the leaders of the project. Not to mention figuring out who can stay after school and who can’t. Some kids have even come in before school” said Mrs. Amaguayo when asked about the amount of rehearsal they had. 

  When interviewing both stage manager Max Binker and sound crew chief Joshua Ioos about the difficulties they said “We weren’t told that we would have to lift a piano onto the stage, we just knew there was a piano involved.” 

  Additionally, “A computer broke up there and the lag time was us moving everything (referring to the audio recordings and music) to another computer,” which resulted in the audio challenges. Though the Heritage members had the time to practice their performances, the technical crew believed they needed one more day with the entire Heritage group to have a good run down. “It’s a good show, they are good performers, we just needed one more day to practice.” said Binker. 

  Despite these challenges, the Hispanic Heritage Show remained impactful. When asked about the participation of the class, Mrs. Amaguayo said “This is a safe space, we’re always doing something. They don’t even have to be Hispanic to join, it can be people from whatever culture. It’s like your birthday, you don’t just celebrate it with one person, you celebrate it with your community”