As performers in <>AHORA!'s Breaking Borders show paraded over 25 different Latin American flags through the packed audience, the first 30 seconds of the event were a true testament to the all-inclusive message of the club's 10th annual Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. The event, held Saturday night in the Shapiro Theater, focused on removing separations between different types of Latinos and non-Latinos and between Brandeis performers and professional talents alike.

Many styles of dance were featured throughout Breaking Borders, from a fusion performance of Aztec, African, Punta and Cumbia, to a graceful montage of an international dancing tour, to salsa, to tango, to hip hop and more. The progression from traditional dances to the more modern ones showed how much of contemporary dance is rooted in Latino dance styles.

Notable among the dances was an expressive and emotional performance of flamenco dancing from Stephanie Spiro '10. Salseros, the Brandeis Salsa club, performed a fast-paced dance, to which the crowd responded with overwhelming applause.

<>Ayer! Fusion was an audience favorite for the sheer variety contained in very few minutes. Mistress of Ceremonies Claudia Martinez '07 said the combination of the dances "make up who we are," and express the range of identities and cultures at Brandeis and in the world.

In the first dance, a drummer kept a steady beat while two dancers moved on either side of him with startlingly accurate symmetry. Micheline Frias '07, also a Mistress of Ceremonies, performed in a fun, flowery outfit, swaying her body along with the music and showing a great amount of physical passion. The most impressive dance move of the night came in this piece, in a section in which four men lifted four women up on their shoulders as they danced in a circle.

After the intermission, Adriani Le?n '08 screened a short documentary she produced, "Brake Yo' Self Foo','" in which she interviewed students about the barriers on campus that keep more people from attending cultural events. She explored the fact that events are generally sparsely attended by the community, and expressed the need to bring out more members of the campus from more diverse backgrounds.

One student said many students feel they have to be of that particular culture or race to attend the events. "Of course, pluralism is a two-way street, but we can be the change that we want to see," Lein narrated. "This month is a way to showcase Latino culture [and] show what <>AHORA! is all about."

Candis Bellamy '06, a well-known slam-poet on campus, recited a poem titled "Time," about the fast-pace of the world. "There's no way to stop it," she read. "Colossal, multi-faceted time. Time has brought me all the way from Queens. Time has raised a thoughtful woman."

Constant screams and applause punctuated the show-before numbers, after numbers and during numbers. The energy was as much a feature of the evening as the dancers and poets, and this excitement truly broke down borders as it brought audience and performers closer together.

The highlight of the night's professional performers was the "Nuyorican"-Puerto Rican and New Yorker-poet Jo-Jo, more formally known as Johanna NuSez. Her heightened emotion, proficiency and clear comfort with the audience made the approximately 250 people who squeezed into the theater feel like a group of her closest friends.

She read three poems about her identity as a Nuyorican woman and her troubled life growing up in Queens, New York. In one particularly powerful poem, "She, I mean her," Jo-Jo talked openly about her mental anguish: "So she sat there with a gun, a bottle of pills and pen and paper. She cried anger, hate and love."

In the same poem, Jo-Jo expressed the difficulty of explaining her "not quite black, not quite Latino" looks.

"At the end of the road, it's all about being who you are as a human being," she said. "We are all humans, just with different seasonings."

Anthony Morales, another Nuyorican poet, who has been featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, recited a poem about his family and Puerto Rican culture in the Bronx, New york, where he was raised. His mother "struggled to see a greater good" as she raised the family, he said, while his father worked two jobs at minimum wage.

Ernesto Lopez '08, a co-coordinator of Hispanic Heritage Month, said the month's events aimed to show Brandeis that "we're here on campus" and to discuss the barriers that separate people culturally, politically and socially.

Coming to Brandeis from his home in East Los Angeles was a big culture shock, Lopez said, but Intercultural Center and <>AHORA! events helped him find community.

"So maybe this year there might be a student who feels the way I felt my first year," Lopez said, "and hopefully we were able to help him out, make him feel more comfortable."

-Rachel Marder and Michelle Minkoff