SEMO PRESENTS `SWING TIME'0

People who like dancing, people who like Big Band music and people who like singing are going to love "Swing Time," a show that combines all three.

Southeast students and faculty members will present "Swing Time" at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Show Me Center.

Christopher Goeke, co-director with Elizabeth James-Gallagher of the Music Theater Workshop at Southeast, and his cohorts have concocted an evening with the look of a Big Band show.

The Show Me Center will be set up with tables and chairs, and hors d'oeuvres will be served. The musicians will perform from a bandstand, and a large dance area will be cleared in the middle of the room. Performers will be dressed in evening and dance wear.

Members of the audience can simply watch and listen if they like, but they'll also be encouraged to dance themselves. Marc Strauss, who directs the dance program at the university, will work on some steps with the audience on a few numbers in case anyone's feeling rusty.

The dance music will be provided by the University Jazz Band under the baton of Barry Bernhardt. "In the Mood," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "1 O'Clock Jump" and "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me" are among the numbers to be performed. Ellington, Basie, Miller, Goodman, Herman and Gershwin are some of the bases to be covered.

Some of the tunes will be sung by members of the Music Theatre workshop. "Seventy-five percent of the music has vocals," Goeke says. "We're putting in vocal lines to songs like `Moonlight Serenade' that you don't always hear the lyrics to."

This will be the first opportunity for many of the singers to perform with a jazz band.

Goeke, who will emcee the show, hopes no one will be scared away by the fact that this music is from the '30s, '40's and '50s.

"The students, who are mostly between the ages of 19 and 23, are just loving this music," Goeke says.

Strauss is in his second year of teaching dance at Southeast. Working through the Department of Physical Education, he has put together a dance minor and has started a club called DanceXpressions. Ten members of the club will perform Saturday night.

Goeke said such a show has never been done on the campus before to anyone's knowledge.

The show is a way to allow students to perform in the middle of the semester, relieving the bottleneck that always occurs near Christmas. But it also is one of the first steps that may lead to the establishment of a new degree in musical theater at the university.

"We are making quick progress toward a musical theater degree," Goeke says, and many years down the road we would like to get to a school of performing arts. This shows we can combine forces."