Ridgewood High School students embraced all things Italian on Nov. 30 at the school’s sixth annual Festa Italiana, an event that has increased in popularity since a pair of Italian teachers launched it as a small gathering for students in the Italian National Honor Society.
Those teachers, Dolores Pigoni-Miller and Giovanna Portanova, have since expanded the annual celebration of the Italian language and culture to include all 300 or so students involved in the high school’s five-level Italian program.
The kids spend the weeks leading up to the event practicing dance and theatrical routines celebrating Italian culture and making funny commercials to advertise Italian-made products such as Illy coffee, Prada and Armani’s “Acqua Di Gio.” Students poked fun at the famous Italian cologne in a commercial featuring a woman who refused to accept a date offer from a man who wore a different scent.
Hundreds of parents, teachers and students packed the auditorium for the first leg of the evening to watch the commercials and dance routines performed to Italian music. Union Ridge students performed “Befana.”
Laughter filled the auditorium during much of the night, but the event carried a deeper purpose. Union Ridge students pitched in to help Ridgewood’s Italian students raise more than $4,000 to support a global fund-raising effort to raise money to help rebuild Amatrice, Italy, the town destroyed by an earthquake on Aug. 24 this year.
“We started with a goal of raising $1,500 for the Italian Red Cross,” said Daniela Santoro of Harwood Heights, president of the Italian National Honor Society at Ridgewood. “But we surpassed that faster than we expected.”
Students sold raffle tickets and solicited donations from classmates during the weeks leading up to Festa Italiana, and more kids walked around during the event selling raffle tickets for an upcoming Bulls game to help add to the fundraising total.
It was a special night for about 25 juniors and seniors who were sworn into the Italian National Honor Society, a group of students recognized for academic success and their commitment to the Italian program.
For senior Vitaliy Vitanskyy, who said he lived in Italy for eight years before moving to the U.S. and completed AP Italian during his junior year, being involved in the Italian program is a way for him to give back to younger students who are just starting to learn the language.
“I speak it fluently, so I’m happy to help others now that I’m done with the classes,” Vitanskyy said. “Italian is popular at this school because I think there are a lot of Italian families in the area, and (students) find they start to get hooked on it as they develop better conversational skills.”
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The night ended with guests filling up on pasta and pizza offered in a buffet set up in the small gym. Hundreds of people waited in long lines for food, all of which was donated by local businesses, according to Portanova.
“It’s a tradition that gets better and better every year,” said Natalia Czachorowski, vice president of Ridgewood’s Italian National Honor Society.
The first couple of years, Festa Italiana was hosted in the school’s cafeteria, but the event’s growing popularity prompted organizers to move to larger space four years ago, Pigoni-Miller said, adding “to accommodate the 450-500 people (who attend), we hold the Festa in both gyms now because at last year’s Festa there was barely room to move.”
Turnout exceeded expectations this year with more than 500 guests, Portanova said.
Natalie Hayes is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.