‘Shakti and Joe’ not your usual show

Friday, April 20, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

What: "Shakti and Joe"

When: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Where: Alta Ham Fine Arts Building, Dance Studio 111, UNLV

Tickets: $15, 895-2787

Louis Kavouras, chairman of UNLV's dance department, is a champion of experimental dance.

He's collaborated internationally with modern dance institutions, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and taken students to perform there.

His hope (and pipe dream) is that someday Las Vegas might have its own Fringe. But that's a long way off.

To keep things stirring, he puts on non traditional productions, such as this weekend's "Shakti and Joe."

The multimedia show features performances by Kavouras and by Shakti, a veteran of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Shakti, who was born in Kyoto of Japanese and Indian parents, incorporates Eastern philosophies, Indian dance and yoga into her erotic, sometimes nude, performances. She describes "Empire of the Senses," which she will perform at UNLV, as "a prayer for the universe."

The erotic elements of her work have been praised and criticized.

"Sexuality is the most important part of our life," Shakti says. "It creates. It's the exaltation of living."

She says her dance is about liberation of the body and soul and plays of good and evil, creation and destruction, black and white.

Kavouras met Shakti in 1999 at Edinburgh when he saw her perform "Swan Lake," an interpretation using Indian and classical dance. The performance was born from a critic's exclamation that he couldn't imagine Shakti performing "Swan Lake."

Kavouras will perform the fourth installment of his tales of Joe, the everyman. Narrated as usual by actor Michael Lugering, "Joe/River" uses passages from Kavouras' journals dating to his college years woven with text by James Joyce.