About 300 N.C. State students, faculty and Raleigh-community members celebrated diversity and acceptance on Friday.
The GLBT Center and the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity hosted the fifth annual Cabaret in Witherspoon Student Center as a way to showcase student talent and promote diversity.
With the cinema full and energy high, Karma Electra, host and drag performer, started with a rendition of Liza Minnelli’s “Cabaret,” setting a lively theme for the night.
This was the center’s biggest show with about 75 student performers participating in the event, according to Justine Hollingshead, director of the GLBT Center.
“It takes a lot of coordination, but it’s an amazing event and everyone’s going to have a good time,” Hollingshead said.
The variety show lived up to its name with performances by three a cappella groups, two drag queens, several dance crews, a modeling troupe, an electric hula hooper, and a mixture of students presenting spoken word.
“This is a time to really bring everyone together in a united way and in support of diversity,” Hollingshead said. “The arts do a great job of that.”
There were up-beat performances, such as the Grains of Time a cappella set list and Zach McKinney’s electric hula hoop routine, which received massive cheers from the audience.
However, there were also powerful showcases of spoken word that tackled gay rights, racism and the fight against AIDS.
“I think it just shows that diversity transcends race and sexual orientation and gender, and it can help to bring a whole community together,” Hollingshead said. “That shows when you look at the makeup of the audience that will be in attendance.”
A short clip was also shown before each act that explained the performers own definition of the terms and how their art or craft expresses it within themselves.
Cheyenne Lashmit, a freshman in biological sciences, said she enjoyed the show, especially for the message it communicated to the audience.
“It shows you should accept people no matter their sexual orientation, skin color, or anything like that,” Lashmit said.
Similarly, Jamal Moss, a junior in biological sciences, said that even though diversity is not always something tangible or visible to the eye, people should still be mindful of other’s feelings and varying circumstances.
“It turned out to be everything I thought it was going to be,” Moss said. “Just being in this crowd, you have to think about what you say, the people you’re with and be aware of your surroundings because there are people, like they said, with diversity in things you can’t see, like religion or background.”
