An extraordinary mixture of sound, dance, music and light will descend upon Athens tomorrow night at 8 in the New Dance Theatre.

The University Department of Dance welcomes the Seattle-based Lelavision Performance Company, founded by musician and sculptor Ela Lamblin and choreographer Leah Mann, a University dance alumna from 1987.

The Lelavision pieces incorporate sculpture, music and modern and aerial dance.

“Our mission statement is a simple equation: Sound plus vision equals light, so that is always our goal,” Mann said.

The name “Lelavision,” comes both from a play on the creators’ names and from Sanskrit terms meaning “creation” and “creative spark.”

A special Friends of Dance benefit dinner also willbe held in the New Dance Theatre tonight at 6:30, followed by a special Lelavision concert.

Tickets for the benefit event are $75, which will go to support Friends of Dance, a group that once was composed largely of contributors making donations to the University dance department.

William Prokasy, the former vice president for Academic Affairs for the University, is a member of the interim committee working to make Friends of Dance a formal organization.

The goal of the organization is to increase money for the department of dance to help students and also to promote dance in the community, with the ultimate goal of bringing the two together, Prokasy said.

Mann often had tried to contact Bala Sarasvati, the University dance department head, about doing a performance at the University when Lelavision was in the South for touring shows.

Sarasvati said perfect timing came in the midst of the formation of the Friends of Dance board of directors.

The board wanted to bring a University dance alumnus to perform who was actually out in the world when it discovered Lelavision would be in town for shows in Atlanta.

“Lelavision is very original. It combines sculpture, music, movement, science at the most basic level of creative discovery,” Sarasvati said.