A healthy society is a dancing society, at least according to Iowa State assistant dance professor Janice Baker.

“Without the arts in our lives we lose the sensitivity and creativity that are essential to a compassionate society,” Baker said.

ISU Dance performers live by this motto.

To demonstrate the importance of dance and art, ISU Dance is preparing to perform its first ever scholarship benefit concert this weekend.

Faculty and local professionals have combined their efforts to present an evening of original dance work and choreographic variations.

The evening will begin with improvisational dance by assistant professor Laurie Sanda and Baker.

Other performances will include Sanda’s debut of her newest work — a playful duet of dialogue, poetry and referee, “When Worlds Collide.”

Dance and poetry will be combined when Valerie Williams of Co’Motion Dance Theater performs “Slap Dash.”

The same combination will also be featured when two works accompanied by poetry, “Blizzard Rope” and “Birth Mark,” are presented by Debra Marquart of the Bone People.

For those interested in Ballroom Dance, Jeremy Waymire and Baker will gracefully glide, bounce and tango across the floor in a number of Ballroom Dance selections.

The most comical part of the evening will be live piano music by pianist Vernon Windsor. He has also prepared several “little Bach pieces” that bear his special choreographic stamp.

The evening will be filled with “great variety with something for everyone, as well as enjoyable and educational,” Baker said.

The idea for the benefit originated as a way to raise money to create a new scholarship for dance students, Baker said.

There are also other endowments to help bring in guest artists to raise money for this purpose, she added.

“[I am] very excited about the performing arts options” at ISU because there is a “good battery of dance classes offered,” Baker said.

The dance department is “not sports educators but movement educators,” she added.

Baker encourages everyone to come and enjoy the dancing.

Curtain time is Sunday at 7 p.m. in the Toman Dance Studio Theater located in the Barbara E. Forker Building, formerly Physical Education Building 196.

Tickets prices are $5 for bleachers and $10 for chairs and are available at the door.