‘Dance in the Desert’ lineup stresses modern over classical

By Steve Bornfeld

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

What a sole-ful experience.

"Dance in the Desert" glides into the College of Southern Nevada this weekend for its 11th annual, three-performance dance-o-rama with a forward-looking focus.

"It's now pretty much a contemporary dance festival, with some hybrids, but postmodern dance," says event director Kelly Roth, who also heads up the college's dance program.

"Ballet has a 400-year tradition and 400 years of codification and it goes through Europe, which is fine. It represents a venerable tradition which we all study as a base of our strength. But I think (modern dance) makes more sense in an environment like Las Vegas than trying to do something like the festivals in Europe with older traditions. With the implosions we have here every 10 years, this is more in the culture here than to do the same things all the time."

Here's a look at some of the talent in this year's "Dance in the Desert" lineup, which includes local and regional performers and has now reached beyond to dancers from Georgia and Michigan:

• Cathy Allen, a showgirl-turned-dance professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Allen has trained with an impressive roster of dance masters, including Alwin Nikolais, Rudy Perez, Betty Jones and Isa Bergen.

• Mindy Krasner, a local dancer and cancer survivor (see accompanying story).

• Matthew Farmer, an international performer from Michigan who has danced and taught in Germany, Belgium and England, as well as across the United States. Farmer is co-artistic director of the Rustic Groove Dance company, described as "affecting their audiences kinesthetically ... and creating a full sensory experience for the mind, body and soul."

• Solaris Dance Theatre, composed of seniors through UNLV. Created as a history class, the company began performing in town and recently returned from Germany, where they participated in a dance and gymnastics festival.

• Step Raptis, an Arizona-based performer and founder of Step's Junk Funk, a percussion group that uses "nontraditional, recycled and found objects to create tonal orchestrations."

• Moving Arts Dance, based in San Francisco and directed by Anandha Ray, which uses striking visual imagery and "balances the splendor of passion and the magnificence in life's darkest moments."

Also on the bill: California's Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre and Metropolitan Ballet Company; Arizona's Desert Dance Theatre and Canyon Movement Company; Catherine Schaeffer from Georgia; and from Las Vegas: Ballet Mink Colbert headed by UNLV dance professor Margot Mink Colbert, Concert Dance Company, the CSN Dance Ensemble, Kelly Roth & Dancers, the Kravenko Youth Ballet, Debra Lacey, the Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater, Teresa Martinez, Cooper Rust, Regenesis Dance and Westwood & Dancers.

The once-a-year "Dance in the Desert," which has grown into a major event for dance fans, supplements the regular season offerings of Nevada Ballet Theatre, Las Vegas' art-of-the-dance anchor. Asked about the festival's modern direction compared to the largely classical repertoire that had previously defined Nevada Ballet, Roth noted that it might now parallel the more contemporary path being carved by the ballet's new artistic director, James Canfield, which, while progressive, could have a backlash.

"The traditional NBT audience is worried that the more classical pieces are no longer going to be found at NBT," Roth says. "(Canfield) wants a new audience for NBT, but it's dangerous to alienate your base. The audience he envisions, the younger, hipper audience, probably doesn't have the same financial resources that the older fans have. I think we have the audience the new NBT would like to have."

Among Las Vegas dance aficionados, it's no longer hip to be square.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.