Dark Days

Lavert Benefield pivots his office chair as he prioritizes the phone calls he intends to make this morning. His pinstripe suit conceals rock-hard abs sculpted by thousands of hours at 24 Hour Fitness.

For six years, until last December, Benefield danced behind Celine Dion in her Caesars Palace show, for which he also served as dance captain.

Now, as a real estate agent for Re/Max Central, the only dancing this 39-year-old Las Vegan does is the back-and-forth required to negotiate foreclosure sales.

Talk about a brand new day.

"I miss the people I was surrounded with," Benefield says. "I miss that. But I don't miss the stage in the sense of the job schedule, the fatigue, the pain."

When a production show or musical closes in Las Vegas -- as many seem to do sooner than anticipated these days -- dozens of performers find themselves looking for theater work in the same shrinking market.

Benefield didn't even try. He began selling houses part time during Dion's final year, full time in January.

"I wanted to go out healthy," he says. "I wanted to go out with a plan. I've seen many people who were successful create a plan, figure out what they want to do and go forward."

Real estate occurred to Benefield while purchasing his first house in 2003.

"The seller paid the agent 12 grand for two weeks of work," he remembers. "I'm like, 'Who gets paid this kind of money?' So I looked into it and I haven't looked back."

Benefield had the luxury of knowing for years when his show would end. Most Broadway-to-Vegas productions give cast and crew three months notice or less. And, since casting for these shows is conducted overwhelmingly from New York and Los Angeles, pink-slipped performers have trouble finding new work in Las Vegas.

Bill Nolte played Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind in the Paris Las Vegas production of "The Producers," a role that was previously his for 18 months on Broadway.

"I went to Vegas not really thinking I was gonna enjoy it," Nolte says, "but I ended up really liking it and seeing that it was definitely a place where actors in musicals could have careers.

"And I still think that," he adds. "I just think that the timing right now is not good."

For six months after "The Producers" closed in February, Nolte -- who gives his age as "in his 50s" -- collected unemployment while seeking openings. Every day, he checked backstage.com and the other Web sites where audition announcements are posted. He found just one, "Jersey Boys," matching his qualifications. And he didn't pass, or else he wouldn't be phoning from Manhattan to comment for this article.

"I need to be back here," Nolte says. "My agent is here, and I'm getting auditions here."

Nolte says he's waiting for a callback regarding a national tour of "Fiddler on the Roof." He says he felt the audition went well.

"But I could be back in Vegas a year from now and I would love it," he adds.

Four months have passed since "Spamalot" made its final Venetian bow, and Carmen Yurich, its former dance captain, is struggling to remain both in town and in the business.

"Being here when you don't know when your next gig is, it can be interesting," says the 48-year-old, who moved to Las Vegas from New York in 2006. "But it's part of the business."

In October, Yurich directed a benefit concert reading of a musical called "Dracula," written by "Ka" conductor Richard Oberacker, at the College of Southern Nevada. But the gig didn't pay, so Yurich finds himself in the same position Nolte was.

"I guess I'm just trying to take it one day at a time," he says. "I'll know when this is enough and I'll have to either find something else or, you know ..."

Yurich spins his thought in a more positive direction.

"I just know that I'm gonna be OK," he says. "I'm right here right now, being creative."

Jill Crooks realizes how lucky she was. The 34-year-old aerialist was approached by "Zumanity" two weeks before "Fashionistas" closed in February. Cirque du Soleil's New York-New York show had an opening for the character Blue Blade.

"Now, with the way the economy is, I feel really, really lucky to have gotten into Cirque du Soleil," says Crooks, who also serves as a stand-in for Louise Yorath, a female acrobat who entwines herself in straps.

"As an aerialist, it's a dream," she says.

But Crooks -- from Hermiston, Ore., by way of Los Angeles -- had her share of hard knocks, too. She came to Las Vegas in 2001 to perform in "Storm" at Mandalay Bay, which closed in 2002. For two years after that, she worked in a loan office.

"I thought I would start to find out what I would want to do after I was done performing," she says. "But what I realized was that I wasn't done performing."

Benefield admits he occasionally considers returning to the stage, too. The last occasion was when he first read about Garth Fagan opening "The Lion King" at Mandalay Bay next May. (Benefield's first job -- after studying architecture at the University of California, Berkeley for two years -- was with Garth Fagan Dance in 1988.)

Benefield won't allow himself to consider "The Lion King" a real prospect, however.

"I'm not gonna pursue it," he says. "The discipline that I learned from dance is the discipline I'm applying to this job, and that means I need to stay focused on my real estate."

He adds: "But Garth knows I'm here."

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.