For this year's Main Stage Dance-Theatre Festival, undergraduate Toni Alejandria has choreographed a piece about everyone who, like her, moves to an inner rhythm.

In her work called Prisma, the dramatic art-dance major asks: What if our bodies were given one moment to break free of their daily routines?

Prisma, Alejandria's debut work, responds by showing what happens "when minds let go and bodies tell stories." The resulting prism of dance proves transformative for monochromatic lives, says Alejandria, who dances in the work.

Students Vivian Thorne and Ann Marie Dragich also are letting loose with their inner rhythms in the Main Stage Dance-Theatre Festival, set for April 10-20, with two matinees on Picnic Day, April 19. Prisma, Thorne's Life Like Tales and Dragich's Reparté explore dance and theatre from extremely different angles, reflecting humor, wit and romance, according to a news release from the Department of Theatre and Dance.

David Grenke, artistic director and theatre and dance associate professor, said of Alejandria, Thorne and Dragich: "These are three of our top choreographers with a wonderfully inventive and theatrical visual sense, and a particularly unique and intricate sense of rhythm."

In Life Like Tales, Thorne conveys the nature of theater, performance and human interactions — with eight dancers transporting the audience to a separate world. Thorne, a dramatic art-dance major, said her work draws partly on inspiration from Buster Keaton's silent films and the influence of artists Edward Gorey, Wes Anderson and Pina Bausch.

Reparté is described as "a funky compilation of personalities coming together through movement in a space of pseudo-reality." Borrowing script material from The Sandman: Brief Lives, the movement is based on romantic relationships and personalized to suit each dancer's idiosyncrasies.

Dragich started dancing as an undergraduate at UC Davis and is now pursuing a graduate degree in food science.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Main Stage Dance-Theatre Festival.

WHEN: 8 p.m. April 10 (preview), and April 11, 12 and 18; 1 and 3 p.m. April 19, Picnic Day; and 2 p.m. April 20.

WHERE: Main Theatre.

TICKETS: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org. Reduced ticket prices are offered for both Picnic Day performances: $5 per person or $7 for two.