Merengue to Mongolian. Tap to Tahitian. Irish to Indian.

The Penn State International Dance Ensemble's spring show, at 2:30 Sunday afternoon in the HUB Heritage Hall, will feature a wide variety of dances from around the world, with a troupe as diverse as its dances.

"We have every different race and ethnicity [in the group and dances]," said Anuja Ghate (junior-psychology), the organization's vice president. "So many girls bring in their own culture."

The Penn State International Dance Ensemble (PSIDE) is a group of about 20 women and men with a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and dance experiences.

"There's a lot of transgender dancing," PSIDE President Elizabeth Powell (senior-international politics) said. "In a lot of folk-style dances, guys do certain steps, and girls do others."

"We need more guys," Ghate added.

Elizabeth Hanley, an associate professor of kinesiology, founded the group in 1977.

After Hanley retired from the group in the late 1990s, PSIDE became an entirely student-run project.

"The dances get passed down from dancer to dancer," Ghate said. "Sometimes we have people come in from the community who are experts to teach us certain styles."

The most important way PSIDE retains and recycles the dances of years past is by keeping in touch with former members who have graduated but live nearby, Powell said.

Each dance is on a rotation of about five years.

When they first join, new members often learn dances they will not perform for a few years to keep the routines alive within the group.

Other times, PSIDE members will introduce different dances to one another and use their personal expertise to improve upon some of the existing routines.

"It gives everyone an opportunity to learn dances from around the world," treasurer Amelia Guzman (sophomore-management and international business) said. "I help out with the merengue dance because it's a dance of the Dominican Republic, and I'm from the Dominican Republic."

For some PSIDE members, the international flavor of the dances is not quite so familiar.

"My training is in ballet, jazz and hip-hop," dancer Laura Guralnick (junior-sociology) said. "Everything's so much different here than what you're used to in dance class."

The dancers practice for about seven hours each week throughout the entire semester.

But to learn and fine-tune the 20-plus dances of the spring show, PSIDE spends six hours a day in rehearsal during the last week of practice before the performance.

"That's when things get tight," Guzman said about the final crunch time. "It gets crazy."

The intense practice schedule up until the spring show helps PSIDE work out all the kinks in the dance routines but does not always prepare the group for every possible mishap of the performance.

"We get such a rush on stage," Guzman said. "It's really awesome, and it's fun rushing around backstage and trying to change quietly in the dark, and you don't know if you have everything on right when you go on stage."