UW dancers performing May 17

Next week, the University of Wyoming Department of Theater and Dance will present Six Songs from Ellis at the school auditorium.

The piece portrays immigrants who came through Ellis Island in the great migration.

The main performance will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 17, though the dancers will also be doing hip hop dances for middle school gym students.

The Humanities Scholar accompanying the tour, Patty Kessler, will be doing workshops on immigration with the high school, and will host a question and answer session after the Thursday show.

Also, Hot Springs Dance LLC students aged over six have been invited to attend the warmup on stage in the auditorium from 5:45 p.m. to about 6:30 p.m.

Six Songs from Ellis is choreographed and directed by UW dance faculty member Marsha Knight and co-directed by Leigh Selting.

According to a release from the university, “Millions of immigrants and their stories entered the United States through the gates of Ellis Island during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, more than 40 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry to this period of relatively open immigration through New York’s harbor.

“Knight was so affected by the opening of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1990 that she began to consider the possibility of creating a work about the immigrant experience. She conducted research at the Oral History Museum at Ellis Island, which alone houses more than 2,000 oral histories.

A seminal production was presented in 2009, which explored how immigration and refugee crises are topics as critical now as they were 100 years ago, and how attitudes toward access and response to need and crisis can benefit from stories — inspiring, cautionary and human — of those who helped to build the country, Knight adds.

During a recent yearlong sabbatical, Knight’s subsequent extensive research of approximately 500 oral histories resulted in a broader glimpse into possibilities for her piece, with 88 individuals represented to date.”