The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration Week continues with the MLK Performing Arts Night tonight at 6 p.m. in the Royal Cotillion Ballroom.
The event will feature a variety of performances, including dances, songs, poems and spoken word pieces. Each performance will illustrate the importance of King’s legacy and the lasting impact his ideals have had on the student body.
The performers are students, and all the members of the MLK Committee who organized the event are students as well. Krystie Nguyen, coordinator of Cross-Cultural Affairs , said the night is the most-anticipated part of the week for this reason.
“Performing Arts Night allows students to be very hands on,” Nguyen said. “It’s run by a student committee, it’s put on by a student committee, and it’s performed by students too. It’s free and open to the public, so it lets students get out there and interact with their community.”
Nguyen also attributed the event’s popularity to the wide range of talent the MLK Committee attracts each year. She indicated that this year has been no exception.
“A lot of people know about Performing Arts night because it’s a long-standing tradition,” Nguyen said. “Sometimes students just come in and see it and say, ‘Oh, I would like to perform,’ or students who performed before say, ‘Oh, I want to do it again.’ We want a variety and we want to have versatility.”
At intermission, the LSU Black Faculty and Staff Caucus will also present the winner of this year’s MLK Humanitarian Award. The award is a scholarship given to a student responsible for improving cross-cultural relations between students at the University.
Other details for the event have yet to be announced, though Nguyen noted the MLK Dance Ensemble would likely make a return, as the group embodies the ideals the event promotes.
“We honor his legacy with expression and diversity, and I think Performing Arts Night is a way of saying that we can all come together in peace and enjoy each other’s talents,” Nguyen said.