In the first week of the school year, while the average student was getting ready sharpening their pencils and packing their backpack, dance students hoping to perform in the annual Kansas Dance Festival were auditioning for a part on stage.

Now, just a few days before the first show Friday, those same students will perform in front of a full audience this weekend in Miller Concert Hall.

Attendees can expect to see 10 or 12 pieces of a conglomerate of different dances such as jazz, modern, ballet and hip-hop, with a brief intermission in between.

The show was critiqued by two guest choreographers this year: Detroit-native, Nathan Trice, a dancer since 1988, and Darrell Grand Moultrie, a New Yorker who has appeared on Broadway and was also selected to help choreograph the dance for Beyonce’s Mrs. Carter World Tour.

“The choreographers would come in for 10 days at a time and set up shop,” Within their limited time they clean the show and give their criticism”, said Cheyla Clawson, instructor of dance at WSU. 

Trice and Moultrie were chosen because of the way they challenge the students, and the experience students can get from working with a professional choreographer, Clawson said.

Another choreographer and 2010 WSU graduate, Maurice Sims, said that they were wanting something theatrical to break the ice from all the seriousness of the usual concert.

“Watching concert dance can sometimes be so dramatic and heavy, so they wanted something a little lighter and a little more fun that’s accessible to an audience who might not go to the ballet dance when it comes in town,” Sims said.

Clawson said there will be a lot of diversity of styles and mood. 

“In our program we have a triple emphasis in jazz, modern and ballet, and the works performed really brings together all of those styles.”

The pieces Friday and Saturday will encompass all the styles the dancers are learning in class. 

Every performer in the two shows this weekend is a student of WSU, but not necessarily a dance major. They are also all members of the Wichita Contemporary Theater, which is a professional student company headed by Nick Johnson that tours regionally, nationally and internationally.

During the KDF, they open up their Friday and Saturday for classes to the general public. This is a good time for students that are interested in the WSU dance program to come in and learn from professionals.

This year, UMKC’s dancers are making a guest appearance. The KDF often invites students from other schools in the Midwest, usually just Kansas, to work together and participate in the same show. In recent years, they featured Kansas State and Friends University.

Haileigh Keirl, a dancer and senior at WSU, said she would watch the KDF performance before she was a student at WSU. 

“It really challenged what the traditional dance looks like,” she said. “I’m out with an injury for this show, but I still love seeing it come alive … it really teaches you how to work together in a professional setting.”