Infused with African-inspired costumes and dance, photo slides and narration, this isn’t your typical dance performance.

Entitled, "Child Comes Home," the 34-minute performance by guest choreographer John Parks seeks to portray both a historical story about black culture and vivid emotions of slavery. The program, which began yesterday and will continue through Sunday, follows the intermission of the Albion College Dancers spring performance.

Honoring the life of dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Pearl Primus, Parks focused the program on Primus’ anthropological work on African culture during the 20th century. It also features some of Primus’ own choreographed pieces.

According to producer and rehearsal master Missy Wyss, this will be the first "interdisciplinary" piece to be produced at Albion.

"It’s exciting to bring something new to campus both for the students involved and the audience because it forces you to think in different ways about the topic (of dance)," said Wyss, who is also the coordinator and professor in the Albion dance program.

Wyss received funding for the performance through a grant from the college’s Foundation for Interdisciplinary Studies.

"The reason why we have never been able to produce a piece like this is because we simply don’t have enough time to devote to producing them," Wyss said. "Only having the semester to teach students the movements definitely restricts what we are able to do."

The grant allowed Wyss to bring Parks—a nationally recognized dancer, choreographer and dance professor—to campus to choreograph and direct the performance.

Parks, who teaches dance at the University of South Florida, is an alumnus of New York City High School of the Performing Arts and the Julliard School of Music. He has also appeared in many Broadway productions and has taught at several universities, including Boston University and Radcliffe/Harvard Modern Dance School.

Parks first stopped at Albion in 1982-83 as an artist in residence for one year, helping establish the college’s dance concentration, teaching classes and giving performances both on campus and in the greater Albion community. During his stay, he also choreographed "West Side Story" for the Albion Community Theater. Parks returned in 1996 and 2001 to choreograph a piece and reconstruct another.

Parks found inspiration for a piece honoring the life of Primus after becoming acquainted with her as a student in one of her dance workshops. When Primus served as a mentor to Parks during the beginning stages of his dance career, he immediately became interested in her anthropological work in African studies and her accomplishments as a dancer and choreographer.

"There are always a number of unsung heroes," Parks said. "I was once told that every time you recognize these ones and talk about their accomplishments, they continue to exist in the minds of others."

Parks began creating an honorary piece for Primus by choreographing a short performance that his USF students produced in the fall of 2005. This initial production served as an appropriate foundation for the similar version he recreated at Albion.

"Child Comes Home" chronicles Primus’ life from the viewpoint of two students who remember her in different ways—one as a dancer and the other as an anthropologist. There will also be live music, photos and a poem recitation. The production will incorporate many different styles of dance, including African-inspired modern, contemporary and traditional African dances.

"Because there are so many other elements that are incorporated into the piece, the history and meaning behind the piece help to draw out the emotion of it all," Parks said.

Parks traveled to Albion for three separate weeks this semester, one each in January, March and April, to choreograph the dances and refine the performance. In between Parks’ visits, Wyss directed the rehearsals and arranged for the completion of other aspects of the production, including the script writing, lighting and costume design. By sending video tapes of the rehearsals to Parks, Wyss was also able to make adjustments to the piece based on Parks’ feedback.

"The piece was alone challenging in the sense that I could not physically see the piece being performed each time," Parks said. "That meant that when I came to visit, students had to be willing to invest more time than usual in the piece so that we could get it right."

The production, which is a collaboration of the theater and dance, English and art departments, will also feature the performances of approximately 17 students in seven dances.

While Parks choreographed the performance specifically to meet the skills of the Albion College Dancers, Wyss feels the difficulty students experienced in learning and performing the dances can be attributed to the raw emotion portrayed throughout the piece.

"Telling these historical stories with movement is hard because the students didn’t live through the time themselves and didn’t feel the anger about the treatment of slaves in the South in such a hard time in history," Wyss said. "The students not only have to learn the movements of the dances, which is a task in itself, but they also have to learn how to show the emotion behind the story, which is one of the most important parts of the piece."

Student performers agreed.

"This was something different than I have ever done before," said Kristy Clement, Rockford junior and the only solo student performer in the piece. "There is a lot of intense movement that requires you to have a lot of strength and stamina. And the piece isn’t just physically difficult, but it requires conveying emotions that I’ve never had to perform before."