UNLV film, dance students heading to Scotland

Friday, Aug. 2, 2002 | 9:01 a.m.

Film and dance students from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas will be waking up in Edinburgh, Scotland this month. During the morning hours they'll paper the medievel town with their fliers and the dance students will perform in its streets.

If their efforts prove fruitful, the students will have attracted an international audience to see their past year's work, which will be presented at venues in the capital city.

For the fourth year UNLV students are traveling to Edinburgh to participate in its August arts festivals -- Festival Fringe and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The festivals draw thousands of artists, filmmakers and performers who flood the city to demonstrate their talents and view other artists' latest works.

UNLV dance students are scheduled to arrive in Edinburgh on Sunday. They will perform every day (but two) for the next three weeks at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

"It's kind of like a circus of art events, mostly performance events," Margot Mink Colbert, assistant chair of the UNLV dance department, said. "There are productions going on every hour of the day. There's every sort of work being shown from the avant-garde to the classical."

The Festival Fringe will feature more than 16,000 performances (of 1,350 shows) in 200 venues throughout the city, so competition to build audiences is tough, Colbert said.

"You are fighting for the audience," she said.

Dancers will hit the Royal Mile, a street of shops, restaurants and ticket booths, to demonstrate samples of their work.

"They have to get out there every day," Colbert said.

Their performance, "Dance Scapes III," is a one-hour contemporary dance performance that combines ethnic, jazz, ballet and Middle Eastern flavors and ties together the work of six UNLV faculty members.

Colbert will perform "Dance Back the Cat," a dance number based on the story "Alice in Wonderland." She'll be backed by student dancers.

When not onstage, students will have the opportunity to attend other performances.

"It's literally a mind- and life-changing experience for them because they don't live in New York where they are exposed to these types of things," Colbert said. "And they get a reaction to the work they're doing that goes beyond their homeland. Usually it's quite well received."

The fringe festival draws mostly professionals. At last year's Festival Fringe, Mikhail Baryshnikov attended a performance by UNLV faculty member Lewis Kavouras.

Meanwhile, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, held Aug. 14 through Aug. 25, will feature work by international directors in categories ranging from animation to documentaries, feature films and shorts.

"It's the largest consecutive film festival in the world," said Francisco Menendez, chair of the UNLV film department, who has attended the last two festivals. "It's 10 days of films and master classes."

Nine film students will be attending this year's film festival. Grants were provided and students are paying $600 each to attend.

"One of the best things the fringe festival allows you to do is see productions of all sorts," Menendez said. "A lot of seasonal performers come back and bring cutting-edge material with them.

"It's a very cathartic experience and an educational one."

UNLV film students will screen 20 performances of their own shorts in a venue next to the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The students will hit the streets early in the morning to hang their fliers and promote their films.

"The student's films are fabulous," Menendez said. "We have some great films going over there."