Sophomore Clare Kariuki (center) and colleagues groove in "Nigerian Dance Revolution."

From year to year, Rangeela, the variety show that is a creative offering from Calvin's international students, adapts its rhythms, its tones and its staging to the creative vision of changing student directors. The show adds a gum boot dance here, a Korean fan dance there.

This year, organizers of Rangeela (Hindi for “colorful”) put the whole show into the blender and came up with a cultural mélange that they called “Fusion.”

The sold-out show, held Feb. 24-25 at the Fine Arts Center , showcased dances that married West African and American Indian moves, Latin numbers that combined salsa, merengue and reggaeton, and a skit that united Dutch, French and Japanese tourists.

Other Rangeela numbers showed a modernizing and Westernizing influence on cultures. The Japanese So-Ran Bushi, for instance, though based on a fisherman's chant, was updated with lots of motion. “It has a traditional style — with an electric guitar,” said junior Yeong Lim, the Rangeela administrative director.

Another dance traced the influence of popular music on Nigerian and West African cultures decade by decade from the 1960s until now. “It starts out with a lot more traditional influence and ends with a lot more Western influence,” said Rangeela creative director Elikplimi (Eli) Agbenorku.

Even the Indian dance number was more Bollywood than traditional.

Rangeela 11 wasn't all innovation, however. Some acts maintained a traditional demeanor, among them the Philippine and Indonesian dances and the Chinese song played on the zheng, a stringed instrument invented during the Ching dynasty.

Yet the show's directors had fun mixing it up. “The world is moving closer and closer together. You have the internet, satellite TV, cell phones,” Agbenorku said. “Cultures are also coming closer together because of the media. Culture is evolving.”

And this year's Rangeela was an expression not just of globalization, he said, but of Calvin's international student community: “Especially at Calvin, international students as a community learn a lot about each other, about each other's food, languages, relationships, religion, cultural practices,” Agbenorku said. “So we want people to see that. We're not merely here to get an education from an American school. We're also getting a liberal arts education from each other in a lot of respects.”

— Myrna Anderson