With one of the top five college dance programs in the country, the University of Iowa knows dance. And the people in the program know how to celebrate it.

Since Monday, the university and the Iowa City area have celebrated International Dance Week, including International Dance Day on Tuesday. There have been performances at the Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., and  the Senior Center, 28 S. Linn St., leading to the week’s main event, InterDance’s “Iowa Dance 2014: Dancing Our Visions” at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, 1301 Fifth St. Admission ranges from $5 to $10.

“It’s a closing of the week’s celebrations,” said InterDance Executive Director Nora Garda. “We invite people and performers from around the state of Iowa and the area. The idea is to have a celebration; it’s not like a huge concert, it’s an opportunity for people to show what they like to do and what they do well.”

This year’s performance will represent a wide-range of dance styles, including jazz, ballet, Irish, and modern.

“There are many dancers, and there are many groups in Iowa, and putting them together in a performance shows the talent around the area,” Garda said.

The event will also encourage the audience to get up and dance; intermission will feature a Zumba instructor running a class with the audience.

“I think dance is a wonderful workout and a very creative art, so when you combine both of them, you feel really wonderful afterwards,” Garda said. “[The event] also sends the message that you don’t have to be a professional dancer. Some people dance very seriously because it’s a profession, but some people dance for cultural reasons or just for fun. For International Dance Week, the idea is, let’s do more dance, so we said, OK, let’s do celebrations all over the country and the world.”

— by Justus Flair