If you think that dance and mathematics have little in common, think again.

The Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern Dance Ensemble, appearing this weekend at the Paliku Theatre, blends the kinesthetic and the cognitive in its choreography, demonstrating how math and dance deal with such concepts as symmetry, spatial awareness, counting problems and patterns.

Co-founders Karl Schaffer and Erik Stern met more two decades ago at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where both were graduate students in science. Schaffer was the mathematician (he's now a professor of math at De Anza College in California) while Stern majored in biology (he's now on the dance faculty at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah). Both were studying dance under a faculty that included Gregg Lizenbery and Betsy Fisher, both of whom now teach dance at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

The idea that math and dance have much in common came to Schaffer and Stern gradually, leading them to create a performance designed for students, educators and families. Their show, titled "Two Guys Dancing About Math," was the result. For Schaffer, the combination of disciplines seemed natural. Even for Stern, science was just a heartbeat away from his primary interest, dance.

The results of more than 20 years of exploration, discovery and creation by the company founders led to "Math Dance With Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern," a book that gives teachers a series of exercises combining mathematics and dance to use in classrooms from kindergarten to high school.

"We feel that the way we integrate math and dance is valuable, and we've had good feedback from teachers," Schaffer said.

This weekend's concerts will include guests Saki, a dancer and circus artist from California, and Lizenbery, who has collaborated with Schaffer and Stern on and off since 1988 but is better known here as the director of UH-Manoa's dance program.

Lizenbery, a self-professed nonscientist, said, "I'm usually the one who does the silly things. We did a piece once about chaos theory, which I didn't know anything about. Nevertheless, I get an intellectual as well as a physical satisfaction working with them."

Schaffer, in return, said, "We feel honored to perform with Gregg. He's a real master of the modern dance." Lizenbery has danced professionally since his college days and has worked with most of the great names in modern dance.

The general public need have no fear that the program will be too academic. "Writing in the Sky" gathers some of the ensemble's best works and is in no way dry and intellectual but rather playful and inventive.

Whether the dancers are creating a story and characters using oversized tangram pieces (geometric shapes that can fit together to form larger geometric shapes), shaping space through the use of hinged pipes or moving in myriad ways around a fixed point in space, there will be plenty of entertainment along with some enlightenment.