Asian Pacific American Association (APAA) hosted their 2024 Cultural show "Asian Nightlife Under the Stars" on Nov. 16. Held in Kirby Ballroom, the show was designed to be a night where students and faculty at UMD and individuals from the Duluth/Twin Ports area could come together and celebrate Asian cultures.

“Asian Nightlife Under the Stars became the theme for our annual culture show because the rest of my executive board and I realized we never had a theme centered on food and nightlife in general, and we wanted to do something a little different by catering from different restaurants in Duluth,” said Dorothy Nguyen, a 5th year UMD student and president of APAA.

The night was filled with a variety of performances, dances and skits. Memorable acts included a fashion show that displayed  the unique types of Asian cultural clothing, Hmong and Indian cultural dances, singing and martial arts.

“It was a night of celebration and appreciation for Asian cultures whether it was through fashion, food, performances, etc. It was also an important night for APAA to see all our hard work paying off,” Nguyen said. 

Student engagement was noticeable with performers bringing students in and having them participate in acts. Cheers were heard all throughout the night for the performers. 

“I would describe the event as very lively and educational. The ending dance at the end really brought us all together,”said Tomiwa Adedoyin, a UMD student in attendance. 

“I love how they used the fashion show to embrace and show off [each other's] culture's unique style of clothing,” said student Simon Moreno.

“The show was only made possible because of the restaurants that catered for our event, APAA's advisor, Azrin Awal who helped us along the way when we were struggling with planning, the hard work that my executive board put in, and our friends and family who came to support us,” Nguyen said.

At the end of the show, Nguyen announced that this will be her final cultural show as she will be graduating this year and moving on to new endeavors.

“We were able to present so many different Asian cultures through food… fashion where students at UMD would wear traditional Asian clothing to show off their cultures, decorations where we utilized different elements of famous Asian night markets and incorporated them into our show,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen wanted people to know this about future events, “APAA is a student organization at UMD in the Multicultural Center, and we have so many fun events planned for the rest of the school year! We also have general meetings with different themes where our members can come and hang out with their peers and do some fun activities. Anyone who is interested can follow us on Instagram @umdapaa or email us at umdapaa@d.umn.edu.”