LOUIS KAVOURAS

By Kristen Peterson

Monday, Sept. 29, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Name: Louis Kavouras, choreographer, dancer/movement artist

Discipline: Modern dance

Age: 43

Education: Master’s in dance and bachelor’s in theater and dance, Case Western Reserve University

Employment: Chairman of UNLV’s dance department, performer and teacher with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company in New York City.

Philosophy: Often combines dance, acting and film in his work. “When these forms clash together, you get a new kind of poetry. Any great work of art surpasses its form. It becomes its own thing ... To understand the arts you need to look at all of them. You really need to look across the discipline. Then you are left with a blank canvas where you know you don’t have to do what was done before.”

On teaching: “My main goal is to empower the artist to go out there and change it all. Art is an adventure. Dance needs to be alive.”

On Vegas: “There is a pioneering spirit here, a freedom. It’s easier to start something here than in New York, a strong experimental quality and a such a large community of dancers from prestigious schools and methods. It’s a commercial scene, but with a backbone of arts.”

Path to Vegas: Originally from Florida, Kavouras enrolled in Case Western as an engineering student. A year into the program, he switched to the arts. After receiving his master’s, he sent resumes all over the world, but “Las Vegas came calling” and he was intrigued. “I was interested in the diverse curriculum in the department, strong performance base and students wanting to be professional dancers. Students very hungry to have a place in the arts. I saw it as a great opportunity.”

Joined UNLV in 1992. Became chairman in 1994. He’s taken UNLV students to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and to Germany, Australia and Korea.

Kavouras fuses a cutting-edge contemporary element to modern dance and created “Joe’s Universe,” an art/performance series that incorporates dance, theater and film to tell the story of Joe, an everyman on a philosophical journey through space and time, asking the big questions and dealing with emotional angst. Often, Kavouras’ mathematical side appears in his choreography, merging the arts with science: “They’re at two ends of the spectrum. They’re both looking at the same thing in different ways — postulation and intuition.”

Sticking around?: “I’m not going anywhere for a long time. Las Vegas is a great place with a lot of potential. It’s young. I love being here in this part of its growth.”