Preserving dance, one student at a time

Steve Marcus

Dancer-choreographer Kelly Roth is shown in a dance studio at the College of Southern Nevada, where he is founding director of the dance program. Roth also is the co-founder of Dance in the Desert, a festival to be presented July 31 and Aug. 1. Roth says he works at CSN “to preserve the integrity of dance” in a city better known for having dancing as a component of other entertainment, such as stage shows.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Kelly Roth

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Name: Kelly Roth, dancer, choreographer

Age: 55

Education: Bachelor’s and master’s in dance, Arizona State University

Who he is: Roth heads the College of Southern Nevada’s dance program. He is artistic director of Kelly Roth & Dancers and director of Dance in the Desert, an annual dance festival in Las Vegas.

Starting out: Roth was considered to be rather uncoordinated as a child. A bullying incident in high school prompted his gym teacher to suggest karate. It turned out Roth had a natural talent for memorizing and executing movement. One day he followed a girlfriend into a dance class. At 17 he dropped out of high school and was taking four ballet classes a day. A Ford Foundation scholarship sent him to San Francisco to study with the San Francisco Ballet.

Departing from ballet: After six weeks studying with the San Francisco Ballet, Roth was asked to join the company. While home in Phoenix packing for the move, his bishop asked him to go on a mission. San Francisco was off. Roth was on his way to England as a Mormon missionary.

His schedule in England was booked 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. For a while Roth got up an hour earlier to work on dance, but that was grueling and the landlady complained that the living room smelled like a gym.

After six months in England, he panicked and looked into a dance school in Brussels after the Royal Ballet school had told him he was too old.

“My dad said that if I did that, I’d establish a pattern of failure that would haunt me for the rest of my life.” He stayed on his mission with no regrets. The day after he came back from England, he was back in ballet class. He got his GED and a scholarship to Arizona State University, then left shortly after to start his career in New York. While there he apprenticed under modern dancers Murray Louis and Alwin Nikolais, before starting his own company.

Getting to Vegas: After leading a nomadic life, teaching at universities throughout the country, Roth and his wife, Leslie, were settled in Arizona when he got the call to start the dance program at CSN in 1995. They moved to Las Vegas with their two children, Kelsey and Tobias.

At the time, CSN had an assortment of dance classes. Roth built up the program, which now has 25 classes, 500 students, 12 adjunct professors and one full-time teacher.

He and his wife developed an associate degree in dance that would coordinate with UNLV’s program, but recent budget cuts eliminated new degrees.

Philosophy: “The approach we’re trying to master is all-inclusive, but also to focus on a unified intellectual and philosophical approach to dance to preserve its integrity as opposed to dance as a secondary art form.”

Performances: His dance companies, Kelly Roth & Dancers and Concert Dance Company, tour and perform locally. A concert at the end of June at Onyx Theater will present a 30-year retrospective of Roth’s work. The concert will celebrate his company’s first performance, in New York City in 1979. Roth will perform four duets in that program.

On July 31 and Aug. 1, he will present Dance in the Desert, a festival he formed with dancer Kyla Quintero in 1998 that draws local and national companies and artists.

Dance in Las Vegas: The words “dance” and “dancer” have a different meaning in Las Vegas compared with other cities, Roth says.

“There is so much focus on commercial dance and what happens on the Strip that people get confused between what we do and what the Strip does — dance as an arm of escort thing, dance in showgirl dance, dance as backdrop to music.”

He says Nevada Ballet Theatre has been successful in bringing legitimate dance to audiences, but that it’s difficult to get community support for modern dance. Roth would like to see more professional opportunities for his dancers. He’d hoped his company would have been the resident contemporary dance company at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, but lost hope when the foundation cut the 600-seat theater from its building.

Other interests: Hiking, composing music. “I’m trying to do landscape in my back yard, but that’s been 13-year process. I’m trying to build a waterfall, but it’s easier moving dancers than boulders.”

Sticking around? “I think we probably will. We have a home here. It tripled in value, then went to below what we paid for it, so we won’t be going anywhere soon.”