REXBURG—This Saturday, BYU-Idaho will hold its Cultural Night celebration. At Cultural Night, attendees will experience traveling the world without ever leaving Rexburg. Student performances will represent different cultures from across the globe.
“So, most of the time we get dancers, we also have music, we have singers, we have poems sometimes, and there's also a lot of solo performances as well,” said Emeline Carrasquillo, a student employee at BYU-Idaho Campus Life who is helping organize the event. “We have a little mixture of everything. And it's just an opportunity for everybody to showcase their cultures, where they're from, or also learn about other cultures.”
Cultural Night will feature more than a dozen different student performing groups representing diverse cultures and countries.
“A lot of the groups, they begin practicing like in September,” Carrasquillo said. “It is months that is put into this for some groups. They're very dedicated. They put a lot of time, a lot of hours into this.”
One of the students preparing to perform in Cultural Night is Connie Zillale from Tanzania. She is part of the group representing the continent of Africa.
“There's about 26 of us. We're doing dances from different countries in Africa,” Zillale said. “It's pretty exciting. There has actually been so much practice since the semester started. It's been really fun. It's been really great to see how we can learn so much in not so much time either.”
Cultural Night does not have a specific theme, but the event will focus on the feeling of traveling to experience different cultures, regions and traditions from around the world.
“It's really fun, being able to see the different cultures in different countries and how they express their ways with music,” Zillale said. “It's just really fun to see it all. It's so nice, it really has a meaning to it, there's a meaning to that dance, there's a meaning to that song. I just like it, seeing how people are connected to the music.”
Cultural Night is Saturday in the Hart Gym at 8 p.m. Tickets and more information about Cultural Night are on the BYU-Idaho website here.