The rhythm of the music swirls together with the beautiful movements on stage as the beat shakes the floor. The voices of the song are drowned out by the excited chanting of the audience cheering on the performers.

On Thursday night, Coppell High School’s Junior World Affairs Council (JWAC) hosted its annual Heritage Night in the CHS Commons. This year’s event held over 600 attendees compared to the previous year’s 300.

The night was filled with colorful dance performances and cultural connections through fashion sense. The audience for each dance was packed with thrilled attendees.

“I wish more people understood how fun this is,” CHS Principal Laura Springer said. “Seeing students dressed up and representing their culture and everybody being accepting of whoever is on the stage dancing.”

Organizations were able to take advantage of last year’s Heritage Night success to show their cultural history and its importance. The African-American studies class held an art auction of artworks based off of famous Blank influential artists created by CHS students. All of the proceeds go to the Coppell National Art Honors Society.

“We have the attraction of Heritage Night to show off the artists here at CHS and the Black culture in the art,” Coppell senior African-American studies student Marisa Martin said. “Art is the basis of all society, by showing it off, we get to show Black culture to a lot of people that might not know about it.”

Each dance was a flurry of passion and enthusiasm, but they all held a deeper significance to the performers. Being able to dance for a night dedicated to cultural celebration was highly sought after as JWAC held tryouts for the teams who could perform.

“Because I am Indian living in America, it feels good showing my culture,” Coppell junior Nadia Monani said. “Going up in front of the entire school to dance helped me connect to my culture.”

There are many more aspects to cultures than dance and the event did a great job capturing the other sides. Coppell junior Lakshmi Gorthi had a booth selling donuts with her non-profit organization, Accel Learning. Accel Learning tutors students in different foreign languages and donates all of the proceeds to the World Literacy Foundation.

“Teaching is something I identify as part of my culture,” Gorthi said. “My family loves to teach, so being able to promote that is why I chose to be part of Heritage Night.”

The importance of hosting Heritage Night in Coppell means more for JWAC sponsor Mashal Khan. Her contributions to making the night happen are rooted in her childhood.

“Growing up, I never had a community where I could go and be around people who had the same values I had,” Khan said. “It is great that we can celebrate our diversity because it was not just one ethnicity that came; we had people all over the globe show up.”

JWAC provided free samosas, chai, ice cream and chips and salsa among entry. Because of the large turnout, the club quickly ran out of food, a signifier on how successful the event was at gaining traction. The Black Culture Club also provided African inspired food.

The night ended with a sea of attendees dancing their hearts out. From every part of the world, everyone was connected by one thing: their love for the community they are in.

Follow Maya (@mvpalovalley) and @CHSCampusNews on Twitter.