Students needing to relieve some stress during finals week may be interested in this year's Last Chance to Dance concert that will be performed in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus.

"It's everything that the students want to get out of their system at the end of the semester," Hillary Peterson, assistant professor of dance and coordinator of the show, said explaining how the students prepare for the concert. "There's really fun pieces and [they] are really high energy in the theatre. I think it's a great way to go into finals week and a way to celebrate dance."

The opportunity to have a dance featured in the show is open to all students and is done by submitting an information sheet to Peterson.

There are no auditions for the pieces to be accepted and the only requirement is that the piece features dance.

This year's performance will feature a dance by Southeast dance department students Martiqua Hopkins and LaPromise Stanford.

Hopkins said they chose to submit their dance into the performance because it was a way to feature something that isn't part of the premiere dance performance, Fall for Dance.

"We chose to submit a dance into Last Chance [to Dance] because it's a chance to experiment within our own personal style of hip hop and contemporary fusion," Hopkins said. "We also just want to join the fun that comes along with the creative energy of Last Chance to Dance."

Hopkins went on to say that their dance was inspired by a dance she choreographed for Stanford for the talent portion of the Miss Black and Gold 2013 Regional Scholarship Pageant held by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

"We decided to choreograph a dance based on the idea of spirits haunting you and not being completely aware of what is happening," Hopkins said.

Last Chance to Dance started seven years ago with the opening of the River Campus, and Peterson said it started for students to show their own personal dance expression without the restrictions from faculty.

"The reason I started it was to give the students more performance opportunities," Peterson said. "When we started it, we only did one main stage dance concert, and now we do two, and it's become such a popular concert with both university students and the community. We used to only do one show at the end of the semester, now we do two shows just for the demand."

Hopkins feels this is important for students to not only have their work featured, but to do so on a main stage.

"Last Chance to Dance is extremely important for us to showcase our work on stage without the limitations and pressures that come with the audition process," Hopkins said. "Although the audition process is helpful to us in our career fields, we need Last Chance to exercise our choreographic muscles and develop and create freely whatever idea is most important to us in that moment."

Also featured this year, as previous years, will be the male dancers of the dance department's parody piece from Fall For Dance, which is sure to leave the audience laughing. A parody is a humorous rendition of something that has happened.

"It's always one of my favorite pieces," Peterson said.

Last Chance to Dance is free to attend and will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 14 and Dec. 15 in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall. For more information about the performance, contact Hillary Peterson at (573) 986-7492 or hpeterson@semo.edu.