This semester, UI dancers have experimented with realism, left rehearsals with bruises, and tested boundaries of space and expression to produce the intensively collaborative event Dance Gala 2009: Synergy. With a total of six pieces, this year’s Dance Gala offers an eclectic pie of artistic ingredients hoping to appeal to a wide range of viewer palates.

“It’s like ‘Top Chef’ where you get the best Asian cook or whatever,” UI dance Assistant Professor and classical choreographer Deanna Carter said. “Even if the choreographers come from a specific dance vocabulary, like modern or ballet, they are still all different in their own personal styles.”

The UI dance department will unveil this year’s interpretation of its annual Dance Gala in North Hall’s Space/Place. The program will première today and run Thursdays through Satudays through Nov. 7. All shows are at 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays. Tickets range from $5 for students to $100 donation packages and are available at the Hancher Box Office, located on the first floor of the Old Capitol Town Center.

Dance Gala 2009: Synergy consists of three restaged dances and three world premières. All incorporate the dance department’s intention to uphold the history of dance while celebrating modern innovation of movement.

“Choreography is a living thing, unlike a written book,” Carter said, flipping through the pages of a book. Even if a story is being retold, the ballet professor believes choreography is always reset to new settings, reflecting different dancers’ own talents and abilities.

“It’s like an opera,” Carter said. “You see the same story over and over, but people keep coming back because there are always new artists” and new interpretations to discover.

Each year, Dance Gala organizers seek two guest choreographers from the vibrant dance world to work with UI students to expand their knowledge and repertoire. This year’s visiting collaborators consist of the up-and-coming Carl Flink, the founder of Minneapolis-based performance group Black Label Movement, and Nina Watt, veteran of the established Limón Company in New York City.

“[Flink] brought such a high energy to rehearsal,” sophomore dancer Brittany Reuss said. “I’ve never had such as experience before … We all really pushed ourselves to bring as much to the table as Carl was bringing.”

UI dance graduate student Jung Hyun “Ari” Lee has always been conscious of dance as a form of art. But Lee discovered a heightened level of expression while rehearsing Flink’s “Lost Lullabies.”

“The focus is on the realism and on the touching,” Lee said. The native Korean said dancers examined different degrees of physical contact, from the lightest graze to squeezing a person literally to the bone. In “Lost Lullabies,” the dancers surpass mere appearances to share a world of true feelings together onstage.

“Every time I watch ‘Lost Lullabies,’ I borderline cry,” sophomore dancer Steven Gray said.

He also worked on extending beyond the walls of the studio in the other guest choreography, “Psalm.” The work incorporates reconstructed excerpts by Watt from José Limón’s historic piece “Psalm,” originally inspired by a Jewish legend of 36 men who voluntarily shoulder the world’s sorrows in order to unburden their community.

Graduate dancer Jiaxi Li can relate to the spirit of hope embodied in “Psalm” with her own performance in Deanna Carter’s classical ballet, “Touché par la Lune.” Originally created for the Ballet Quad Cities in 2007, the piece is kindled by Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata.

Li said the movements in “Touché par la Lune” speak of a persistent hope. Through her own research, she found the historical background of Beethoven’s sonata, in which the composer experienced a type of Romeo and Juliet love with an unattainable woman of a nobler class. Still, by the end of the piece, there lingers a hopeful desire.

Li compares Beethoven’s story to her own torn love affair with her surrogate home in the United States competing with her roots in China. In “Touché par la Lune,” she looks for the conclusion of her life, haunted by questions of the future.

“When I move back to China and forever leave the U.S., it will take out half of my heart,” she said about what she perceives is her ultimate destiny.

In the performance, Li dances onstage in parallel with her dream alter ego that her character wishes it could embody.

Carter selected “Touché par la Lune” to include in Dance Gala specifically for its difficulty.

“This piece, technically, would make professional dancers shudder,” she said.

In the double pas de deux, Carter presented her male leads Gray and Isaac Stauffer with the challenge: “How do you lift 120 pounds in the air and do it elegantly?” The choreographer said her dancers manage to make their efforts appear seamless.

Presenting another challenge apart from technical precision, 12 dancers worked with UI modern-dance Associate professor and choreographer Charlotte Adams to create the world-premiére piece “White Noise.”

As a choreographer, she said, she usually comes in with a seed of an idea inspired by a conversation, an image, or a sound that she heard and allows it to breathe in the dance studio.

“White Noise” stems from the concept of miscommunication — hearing, but not listening; looking, but not seeing; speaking, but not communicating.

Ari Lee said she created her own sentence — “I have something to tell you, but [you are] not listening” — which she focused on to contribute choreography to the multilayered production. Other dancers followed suit. The outcome is each dancer’s take on miscommunication entangled together as one frustrated knot of ideas.

Other works in this year’s event include UI Assistant Professor Jennifer Kayle’s quintet piece “The Light House,” a humorous and reverent examination of redemption.

Rounding out the six-part playbill is dance faculty member Annett Schädlich-Hendrix’s “XX.” Using seven female dancers and five ironing boards for props, “XX” is a morphing of robotic Stepford Wives with windup Pussycat Dolls.

“If [the UI dance department] were in New York or Chicago, where there are all sorts of artistic and cultural events always going on, I’m sure we would be the ticket to see,” Carter said.

She values the intimate setting of Space/Place, which allows the audience to discern dancers’ facial expressions, hear them breathe, and anticipate the dancers’ next movements.

“There are a lot of different emotions coming at you,” Gray said, smacking his hands against his face. “They all hit you in the face like a baseball.”