No curtain is between the audience and the stage. The space receives you with arms wide open, the same openness this nation had when receiving thousands of immigrants from Europe after World War I. Chairs, suitcases, and several ladder structures wait for the show to start and ignite not only your imagination, but emotions and feelings through testimonies of a journey of immigration, identity and belonging. RDT’s Six Songs from Ellis is a multidisciplinary performance where the dancers are actors and the actors are dancers. Props (a ship, a long dining table, Ellis Island, a birth) trigger several choreographic conventions, and members of the Salt Lake City community share their history along with the professional performers.
Courtesy of RDT.
The actors talk masterfully to the audience with a remarkable clarity, the dancers encompass the work of the actors through their elegant pace and execution — both do important work when dancing together, singing and acting. The lighting creates the precise atmosphere of struggle in the audience’s hearts, or sometimes causes a joyful feeling. The media marks the rhythm of the production as the use of the props create magic on stage. Especially moving are community guest artists, Anne Cullimore Decker, Karineh Hovsepian, Andrew Maizner and Jon Pezely, who speak from their hearts about their past, their stories, their roots.
The spectacle is divided in two acts, and the second one is unnecessary. The show could have been an hour or one hour and a half with no intermission. This issue is a repetitive structure where we see the actors telling the stories of their migration from different countries of Europe, going through their overseas travel until their arrival and acceptance in the United States through the Port of Ellis Island. However, the show sustains itself through the passionate work of the performers and all the people involved in this production. The end of the show causes an applause burst from the audience. People (curiously, the majority are white) standing up from their seats moved by what they have just witnessed, their history has been told.
Dance, multimedia, theater, opera… it becomes extremely challenging to point out the outstanding performance of only one individual in a show where all performers build a community and work in an elegantly balanced performance. But that is what this is about: a communal experience. There is no other way Six Songs for Ellis could have been put together. The topic pushes the directors to shape a performance that invites us to reflect and acknowledge the strengths this nation has had, and perhaps to reflect on a more compassionate future in terms of immigration policy or the value of other human lives.
I had the pleasure of being at the Repertory Dance Theatre production the night of April 22, right before traveling to a Latinx heritage conservation conference. I mention this detail because the timing inevitably took me to draw some parallels about the complex social and political fabric of the United States. There is a need to express how the history of the US has been built on values of cultural diversity and immigration. Hopefully, Six songs from Ellis will inspire all who attend to a more loving and more human comprehension of otherness, especially as we are facing an era with the largest number of global refugees in modern times.
Originally from Mexico City. Stephanie García holds a Contemporary Dance AA and BA from the National Classical and Contemporary Dance School of the National Fine Arts Institute (INBA), studies in Cultural Management from Universidad de Guadalajara, and a Cultural Management and Cultural Policies Diploma from the National Arts Center (CENART), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) in Mexico. She is a performer, choreographer, performing arts director, cultural manager, producer, and Co-founder and Co-Director of Punto de Inflexión Dance Company and PROArtes México. Stephanie has danced with several of the most important choreographers and venues in Mexico, performed in eleven countries of America, Europe, and Africa, and choreographed more than twenty original dance/multi-/inter- disciplinary pieces. She was co-founder and co-director of Sur Oeste Arte Escénico for ten years. A beneficiary of programs like IBERESCENA grant (Iberoamerican Performing Arts Fund), Prince Claus Fund (Netherlands), and seven times awarded by Mexico's National Culture and Arts Fund grants from 2006-2019. With seventeen years of dance and arts administration experience, Stephanie has been considered by the press to be one of the most prominent dancers in Mexico. Garcia is currently an MFA candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Modern Dance program at the University of Utah.
loveDANCEmore was thrilled to present Stephanie’s work in last October’s Sunday Series, curated by Jorge Rojas. You can still watch a digital presentation of RDT’s Six Songs from Ellis at their website.