As Valerie Williams opens the door to her hectic and busy life, she lets her white cat Blanche out to get some exercise.

The pregnant cat carefully chooses her steps as Williams smiles down on her the way a mother does to a daughter. The low afternoon sunlight dances through the doorway, enhancing every feature of her face in great detail when she speaks.

“She’s a stray. I think someone just dropped her off. People do that, you know,” Williams says with a bit of tension in her voice.

As she walks up the narrow stairway to her office, housed in a large residential duplex, she excuses the mess. The past weeks have been dreadfully busy for Williams, who serves as director of the dance company Co’Motion, which she co-founded in 1978.

She also serves as artistic director, managing director, designer, choreographer and performs on the side.

“Every once in a while I think, ‘Too much, Valerie. Too many full-time jobs,'” she says, finally seated in her cluttered office, where it seems the chaotic stacks of books, papers and audio cassettes are beginning to win the battle of “Williams vs. work.”

Williams, a 1977 graduate of Iowa State University with a degree in physical education, never thought she’d use the degree or be anywhere near dance education.

Williams was involved in dance during her years at ISU, and also studied chemistry applying herself in zoology, because of her fascination with the structure of the human body.

“I don’t think one ever stops educating oneself,” Williams says. “I think education is an ongoing process. I think people who stop learning or close themselves off die intellectually.”

Valerie first began her education learning other languages in the immigrant neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wis., where she grew up.

“I understood orders like, ‘you kids go out and play,’ in a lot of different languages,” she laughs.

In her neighborhood, dancing was a normal thing to do, but not modern dance. Polka, waltz and folk dances, however, were “all normal.”

She says modern dance is an individual art form. It’s not a corporate form like ballet or tap dance.

“Modern dance doesn’t have any steps,” Williams says. “It’s more conceptual, less step-oriented and more idea oriented. The movement is in service to the idea.”

Williams’ dancing started at the age of three in the living room of her family’s home, where her father would put on records and she would make up dances.

“I’ve always been involved in music,” she says. “Our family rules required that all the kids had to study a band instrument for two years. We all had to know how to read music. We all had to study dance for two years.”

Williams believes she was enrolled in ballet classes at a young age because she was an active child, and ballet ate up that energy.

She never lost that energy though, even after the grueling hours put in at ballet class.

“I became a dancer because I’m a kinesthetic individual,” she boasts. “I feel; I move; I taste; I see. I experience the world sensually through my senses.”

Williams says her parents were an enormous influence on not only her dancing but her education as well, citing their rules of what education was and who an educated person is today.

“My father, in requiring us to learn music, said, ‘You will at least be able to play the radio intelligently,'” Williams explains.

With all the dance projects in which Williams is involved, she still keeps her head on straight and doesn’t lose herself in her work.

“I’m a little bit of a workaholic. I give myself the ’10-hour’ rule. I’m not allowed to work more than 10 hours a day.”

When she finds some spare time in her strictly rationed day, she takes what she calls “two-hour vacations.”

“I quit working, and I read a book for awhile, or I garden,” Williams says. “I have to keep my fingers busy, so sometimes I sew. I can’t sit still very well, so sometimes I say, ‘Valerie, you can sit on the front porch and pet the cat.'”

Williams recently made costumes for some of the dances in Iowa State’s upcoming “Barjche” and is currently preparing herself for the premiere of her experimental modern dance piece “Room To Spare.”

“Room To Spare” is a 40-minute solo performance during which Williams dances under, behind and around a 20-by-20-foot sheet of silk fabric. Williams is struck with a childlike enthusiasm as she describes the concept behind “Room To Spare.”

“I wanted to make a dance that was about shape and space,” she explains. “In a lot of ‘Room To Spare,’ the body is not seen in the traditional dance way. It’s seen very sculpturally.”

Williams seems intrigued about performing her piece in an art gallery as opposed to a stage.

“First of all, it’s a big ol’ open space, and dancers love space,” Williams marvels. “‘Space is our canvas,’ to quote Betty Toman. We place ourselves in space. We use three-dimensional designs, and what better place to do that than in an art gallery?”

At the age of 43, Valerie’s life is encompassed by dance, and with omnipresent energy, she gives every performance her all.

“[Dance] is the hardest thing I’ve done, and it is the most invigorating thing I’ve done,” Williams says. “When I am performing, I am entirely in the present. Nothing else gives me that sense. My body, my mind, my spirit, my energy are all entirely present.”

Williams is very adamant about community involvement in dance. She believes that people who don’t get out and experience the arts aren’t helping to further civilization.

“People should go see dance concerts,” she says. “People should partake of what the world has to offer. That includes going beyond your comfort level, especially while you’re in college.”

Dance is life according to Valerie, and life is a dance.

As she lets Blanch inside from her outdoor escapade, Valerie discusses the feline’s upcoming motherhood, yet another dance in her hectic life, and decides to spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing and enjoying the weather.

“Room To Spare” will premiere tonight at 7 in the Brunnier Art Gallery. Admission is free.