Las Vegas Weekly

Dance … with a twist

Jaime Velilla (left) and Allie Lincoln rehearse for CSN’s performance of The Juliet Letters.

Photo: Jeff Speer

One year it’s a ballerina escaping the Nazis, the next year Princess Diana shares the stage with the Heaven’s Gate mass-suicide cult—mixing it up is the name of the game for Kelly Roth and the College of Southern Nevada dance department. And this weekend, the advanced dancers of CSN’s Concert Dance Company will perform The Juliet Letters, Elvis Costello’s 1993 work for solo singer and string quartet.

Roth has choreographed it as a series of dance vignettes depicting loves lost and found, suicide, infidelity, the afterlife—everything, in fact, that makes life worth living. Singer Paul Villaluz and the Sol Quartet, a group of accomplished classical musicians, will accompany the dancers.

Also on the program: a CSN Dance Ensemble celebration of the 40th anniversary of Iron Butterfly’s psychedelic classic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” complete with light show; noted guest choreographer Marko Westwood’s comic S#its and Giggles; and Roth’s revival of his 1978 Mozart Duet, a lyrical work the CSN dance director created while under the tutelage of modern dance icon Murray Louis.