The thought of being in Paris and enjoying yourself along with friends was the last impression Fall for Dance 2014 left on the audience members in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus.

The Southeast Department of Theatre and Dance hosted its annual Fall for Dance performances Nov. 20 through Nov. 23, and it was a performance that took the audience on a journey through emotions.

The show started with an eerie and somewhat creepy performance entitled "De-Lirium" with soloist Jessica Carlson scratching herself as the other dancers ran across the stage. The performance then went on to convey what the soloist was thinking in her mind. The dancers in this piece wore masks while Carlson's face was the only one that was visible.

"I loved this piece of the show because it started in a way that I didn't feel the concert would," Alandra St. Clair, audience member and senior in the psychology department, said. "It immediately drew me into the concert and helped me understand what direction this concert was going in."

The show continued on with a piece entitled "Acoustic Spaces" that featured periods of silence and acoustic sounds.

The concert then took the audience on a comedic stance and featured three spoken-word sections that described the different roles women play in society. The piece showed the audience the perspective of housewives first, then a husband's view on life and hardships versus how the wife would deal with it. The final interpretation was how a perfect husband would be for a wife. These interpretations were accompanied by the words of Ogden Nash poems "Allow Me, Madam," "The Outcome" and "The Perfect Husband."

Something unique to this year's performance was a piece done by a new dance instructor, Michelle Ramos. She performed a more subtle dance and used a mirror as a prop.

This year's guest piece was by choreographer Geoffrey Alexander and was entitled "Fade to Normality." This was an impactful performance that left the message with attendees that you can either be somebody who conforms to societal norms or you can be your own individual. Dancers showed this within their dance and how, by trying to get away from the normalities, sometimes you are sucked back into it.

St. Clair said that this was a very inspirational piece and she could really relate to the messages that were being shown.

"This piece really showed me a lot and related to a lot of things going on within my life," St. Clair said. "It was by far my favorite piece of this show."

The concert ended on a light-hearted piece that took the audience on a journey to Paris, France, with friends. The piece featured the dancers coming together and partying with an undertone impression of intoxication that made for a fun ending to the show.

Martiqua Hopkins, junior dance major, said that she felt this performance was different from ones done in the past.

"This performance had a lot of variety, stylistically, than it has [had in] other performances," Hopkins said. "A lot of the choreography in the fall seems a lot heavier than it does in the spring, so this concert had a lot of lighter performances then it has done in the past."

She also feels it is imperative that students attend these types of concerts so that the dancers can get feedback on how to make them better in the future.

"We just want that feedback to see how the shows are going because we might think it was great, but from an audience perspective, we don't want choreography to be too abstract where no one gets it at all," Hopkins said.