Arts Festival is pretty awesome: the weather is finally warm, and it’s nice to sit in O’Neill Plaza and see all of the amazing talent at our school. However, most of us have no clue how much work actually happens behind the scenes.
Andrea Bonaiuto started volunteering for ArtsFest her freshman year, and every year she wanted even more responsibility. This year, she was the Arts Festival Programming Coordinator. She began working on the festival in September at Student Activities Day and communicated with over fifty art-related groups during the year.
In an effort to make ArtsFest even better, the Arts Festival Executive Committee decided that the festival was a great opportunity to provide different groups at BC with educational opportunities and professional mentors. Andrea worked with all of the groups on campus to facilitate workshops, auditions, and rehearsals for the festival. For example, a professional a capella group worked with the BC Dynamics and B.E.A.T.S. to help them improve their rehearsal process and performances. There were also poetry, choreography, and fashion modeling workshops. All of these programs were great opportunities for student clubs, who don’t usually receive any professional help.
As a dancer in Fuego del Corazon, Andrea loved seeing all of the dance showcases during the festival. According to Andrea, ArtsFest is an “incredible opportunity for students and dancers to see what a wide variety of talent we have on campus with eclectic roots from Indian to African to Philippine to Latin (to name a few).”
Her other favorite part of the Arts Festival was Saturday’s theme of social justice. In case you missed it, there was a three-hour social justice film festival in which students from the Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Film presented documentary films from the Mexican border, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Haiti, Israel, South Africa, India, Chile, and Kenya.
Andrea is graduating this year, and says she will miss everything about the festival. For Andrea, the greatest part of ArtsFest is the convergence of so many different art forms and artistic groups on campus that wouldn’t normally come together. This summer, she will be working and dancing in Boston before heading to Latin America in September. Andrea’s work on the Arts Festival cannot be understated, especially with all the changes that occured this year! She deserves many thanks for all of her hard work, and for providing the BC community with another amazing Arts Festival!