Give a bunch of ballet dancers a vacation, and what do they do? Keep dancing.

For the 30-some dancers from Miami City Ballet performing this weekend in Our Show, the annual dancer-produced and curated fundraiser-slash-homegrown event, it's an opportunity to strut some of the stuff they don't get to show off during the ballet's regular season.

''We're all curious and want to try new things,'' says veteran principal dancer Deanna Seay, Our Show's unofficial producer.

And new they are. Most of the 14 pieces on the program Friday and Saturday at Miami City Ballet's Miami Beach studios were created by the dancers or their friends and experiment with contemporary movement.

''It's a lot of world premieres, we could say,'' Seay adds. ``It's really exciting because you get to see a different side of everyone. It can be very revealing.''

As with so much art, there's also a financial motive. During the summer, MCB's dancers go on a regular layoff and live on unemployment benefits and any extra performing or teaching jobs they can scrape together. Any profits from Our Show will be divided equally to supplement their summer income.

The first version of Our Show, in 2002, was inspired by one of the troupe's semi-regular financial crises. The dancers staged an independent performance in a more intimate setting that they hoped would attract attention, new donations and audience members. Some of that audience has returned every year.

Our Show gives the dancers an opportunity to branch out. Company member Alex Dufaur staged and shot the publicity photos. Elizabeth Keller has been concentrating on marketing. Some are performing classical pieces not on MCB's heavily neo-classical repertoire: Haiyan Wu and Yang Zou will dance the White Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake, while Mary Carmen Catoya and Zherlin Ndudi will do pas de deux from Le Corsaire and La Bayadere. The company lets them use the rehearsal space, as well as the technical staff and the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Theatre at MCB's studios, for free.

For the dancers, there's the priceless opportunity of doing their own thing in a career where they are always taking direction from someone else. ''The basic rule,'' says Seay, ``is the dancers can do whatever they want.''

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