Last Saturday, hundreds of students poured into Snyder Center for the annual club rally, excited to see what fun clubs were in store this year. Whether it be trying something new or reconnecting with a past passion, there are a plethora of opportunities to engage in. This week, The Phillipian interviewed a wide range of arts clubs offered this year. From performance art to creative writing, there’s sure to be a club for every creative passion.
Karishma Cara Del Castillo ’25: Bollywood Dance Club
“We are a performance and event-based club… We perform in shows like Dance Open, any club fairs, things like that. But we also host movie nights, and we like to collaborate with the South Asian Society… I started this club because Dance at Andover had a very specific few genres that it was tapping into… And really helping to diversify the dance program by representing a group that I feel is underrepresented in dance. We are a non-affinity space. We don’t require anyone to have any dance experience… I keep it as complicated as I can while making sure that I’m keeping in mind who I’m choreographing for.”
Michelle Chen ’25: Asian Performing Arts Club
“No other dance club on campus does our dance style. And it’s just something that a lot of the dancers look forward to seeing, just because in our dance style we use props a lot. We create images of flowers, stuff like that… My other co-head, Liliene [Zhang ’25], she’s from China and so we can buy a bunch of cheap costumes from there. She just brings them over, which is something we have to plan ahead of time. I love the costumes, so it’s really fun.”
Christopher Fu ’26: Andover Writer’s Alliance
“We usually bring prepared prompts to have people write about for short periods of time… Some basic examples would be, “What weather are you feeling like today?” and try to describe yourself as that weather or write a diary entry as if you are that weather… People can read through, we can read through together, and then we use that as a starting point from which people can develop their own writing, and they can use that original piece as inspiration… I would just say we’re planning on bi-weekly workshops this year something like that, and we’re hoping to collaborate with a lot more clubs.”
Cyril Coumans ’25: F-Stop Photography Club
“Every year [our published Zine] is a different topic and the topic is just one word; this year it was intimacy… and that’s what sort of separates us from maybe other media clubs is our yearly publication of our magazine. It’s sort of rooted in simplicity, and we really just ask anyone from Andover, any student from Andover to share their photos with us for publication and after every year we make the zine, and then we sell it. It’s really cool, and we’re starting to build an archive of repositories… Join the club; it’s great. Photography can serve the purpose of keeping track of memories but also keeping track of history.”
Cindy Yang ’26: Photon
“My favorite part of Photon is the community. If I’m going to be a little sentimental here, my first year, Glow Show was really special for me. It’s our annual performance hosted by Photon during the end of Spring term. We feature all our routines, some people can do solos, duets, whatever. And so, during my Freshman year, my first glow show, I just remember feeling really supported, and really appreciated. Everyone there is screaming and cheering for you, and that’s a really nice feeling when you’re performing on a stage.”
Ethan Liu ’26: Poetry Club
“For Poetry Club, our plan for this year is to build a community where anyone of all levels of experience with writing, short form or poetry, can come and enjoy the process of writing poetry, the creative process, and we want to host a variety of different club meetings from workshops, to learning how to write poetry, the different forms of poetry, and the rules that come with poetry. Free writing exercises/sessions, where people can take time out of their, go off of theme and write poetry that reflects themselves. We want to do open mic nights, where people can go up and share their poetry, as well as maybe including a fusion of poetry, slam poetry, and live music. I was thinking, since I do jazz music, I could play the piano and improvise chords while people recite their poetry.”
