The Hillsdale College Tower Dancers will perform original works featuring ballet, contemporary, and modern dance styles at their fifth annual fall concert Dec. 3 in Markel Auditorium. Student performers choreographed the entire concert for the second year in a row.

“Like all other visual arts, dance is an encounter with beauty, an ideal that is very important to Hillsdale students,” senior choreographer and dancer Lucy Fernandes said.

Junior Tower Dancers Laura Luke and Hannah Tully will direct the excerpts from Act II of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,” according to a Hillsdale College press release.

The student dance company, which has grown to 25 members this semester, is collaborating with professors in the theater and dance departments for the performance, according to Fernandes.

“We have to coordinate everything from press releases and social media to blocking on the stage and lighting cues,” Fernandes said.

The concert will allow the performers to express their creativity and grow in understanding of the art, according to Fernandes.

“They are not just executing movements and being told what to do, but instead, they are in charge of every aspect of the performance: the dance’s lighting, costuming, music,” Fernandes said.