While the majority of EC students attempt to shake off spring break fever and get back into the semester groove, the dance department prepares for hell week, the final week of rehearsals and costume adjustments before opening night.

The semesterly event the dancers have worked hard toward, toughed through endless hours of late night rehearsals scrapping every body part and countless missed meals, will all pay off tonight.

“Some of the pieces have storylines, some are thematic, and some are just simply abstract dances,” Daniel Berney, dance professor, said. “There’s really a potpourri of dance styles that are presented. There’s something for everybody that comes to the concert.”

An eclectic group consisting of faculty and student choreographers and a guest choreographer, who all have complete license to choose their own music, style of dance, and their dancers. As one of the three directors, along with Pam Santelman and Liz Hoefner Adamis, Berney is expectant of a phenomenal show.

“What you get with the students in the spring is a longer period of time, to develop some of their choreographic projects, so we a get a refined and higher level of presentation than we get initially in the fall,” Berney said.

The momentum continues from the success that EC had at this year’s American College Dance Festival Association (ACDFA), earlier this month at Arizona State University, some performances that were presented there will be shown at this concert – one by the newest full time dance faculty, Liz Hoefner Adamis.

Adamis presents an 11-minute piece, excerpts from “The Arabesques of a Blind Mind” which is based on the writings of human right activist and poet Breyten Breytenbach.

“I have three set pieces, these huge boxes that Bryan Bates made, [that] the dancers use throughout the piece,” Adamis said. “The name of the book is the Confessions of an Albino terrorist, it’s based on his (Breytenbach) time in the South African prison system from 1975-1982, two of which were in solitary confinement.”

Showcasing her work for the first time, student choreographer and last semester’s Rising Star Alisa Carreras’s piece titled “Sleepwalking” is the second on stage following Berney’s opening piece “Cannon in D.”

“It’s a lyrical modern piece – about falling out of love [and] there’s no resolution,” Alisa Carreras, 20, dance major, said. “This is my first time choreographing, it’s been an entirely different experience – being the one to be responsible, getting everyone to rehearsals on time – it’s coming [together] the way I wanted so I’m happy with it.”

Unlike the Fall Dance Concert that takes place in the Campus Theater, the Spring Dance Concert that takes place in the substantially larger Marsee Auditorium. Eight faculty choreographers, four student choreographers, split into two acts, thus creating one amazing show, but for Pam Santelman – her last show.

Closing the concert, one final time, will be Santelman’s piece titled “Hovering,” that was made possible by the engagement from the students in the choreographic development of it.

“She really worked as much as a facilitator as much as a choreographer,” Berney said. “We are just going to miss her dearly, unfortunately that faculty position of another retirement was not renewed so this will whittle our full time faculty staff down to two positions, and we feel we will be dramatically impacted and have a hard time sustaining the quality of the program it’s been with [Santelman] here.”