Students will be dancing in the night.

Late Night Penn State that is, as Focused Productions and the Undergraduate Student Government host Rhythm Spotlight at 10 p.m.

This individual dance competition will feature more than 30 Penn State students as they compete in either the urban or Indian portion of the contest.

"Urban and Indian culture have become increasingly more important here at Penn State, and bringing those styles of dancing to campus seemed like the next step to me," contest coordinator and host Mohan Sivaloganathan (senior-electrical engineering) said. "Both styles of music are becoming so mainstream in America, so I felt it was important to give more people a sense of the cultural dancing that goes along with that music as well."

Helping him spread cultural dance at Penn State is Rahul Bhansali (junior-finance and international business.) Bhansali is assisting in the publicity for this event.

"One of my biggest goals in the past two years has been to promote dance on campus," Bhansali said. "This is probably one of the best ways for us to bring these ideas about dancing to Penn State."

The competition will be divided by musical styling, then broken down into tournament-style brackets. For each round, the music will be changed, so the dancers must spontaneously create and perform each routine.

Jerry John (senior-information sciences and technology) is one of the DJs for Rhythm Spotlight. He said he is looking forward to providing some of the music for the competition.

"Music is one media where a lot of culture can be spread," John said. "Dance is not really publicized as much, so we decided to bring dancing to the front this time. There is going to be a really diverse selection of music at this competition to really challenge the dancers and see what they can do."

Sivaloganathan said dancers would be judged on their versatility, overall flow and audience reaction.

"It's important that the dancers have an impact on their audience," Sivaloganathan said. "And since the style changes for each round, the winner of the competition has in a sense really conquered the music."

In addition to the competition aspect, two guest performance groups are scheduled.

Sivaloganathan said he urges people to come and watch all the performances tonight.

"I'm a dancer myself, and it has always felt like dancing was more about a group at Penn State and individuals never got to shine," Sivaloganathan said. "This is their time."

Bhansali added, "People should come and get excited. Start dancing in the aisles."