For students interested in seeing a performance for a cause, the annual Art for Life AIDS benefit show will be going on Saturday here at NIU.

“It’s a student-choreographed dance that involves our students here. They created their own pieces and they will be performing their interpretation of their art,” said Byron Neal, president of the Campus Activities Board. “The whole Northern Dance Theatre is involved. There will be ballroom dancing, there will be hip hop dancing, there will be salsa dancing, there’ll be modern interpretive dance– all kinds of dance genres.”

According to Brittany Blume, president of the Northern Dance Theatre, this annual production has been a tradition since 1996.

“We work really closely with Keith Elliott, he’s in charge of the big show they do every single year in Chicago called Dance for Life. It’s the same thing. All the proceeds go to the National AIDS Foundation, the only difference is they have big companies that do the shows for them, like the Joffrey Ballet,” Blume said. “There’s going to be a lot of dancing, and there’s going to be singing and acting at this year’s performance.”

“The event is free, however the Northern Dance Theatre will be accepting donations for the research of AIDS,” Neal said.

Neal added that the economy has caused several sponsors to drop out of the event.

“We didn’t want it to go away, so we decided to co-sponsor to keep the event afloat. For the benefit of the people involved, and the people that have AIDS, we didn’t want it to die out,” said Neal. “We want to give back. We want to let everyone know we are here for the community and here for the students.”