Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater marks its 10th anniversary

The Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater celebrates its 10th anniversary Friday at The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall with a performance blending old and the new.

But Friday’s 10th-anniversary season launch almost became a final bow.

Although founding artistic director Bernard Gaddis ultimately decided against it, he contemplated pulling the plug on the company following Friday’s first-decade retrospective.

“At a certain point, I was so tired,” says Gaddis, 46. “I didn’t know where I was going to get a second wind from.”

His fatigue is understandable. Beyond his LVCDT duties, Gaddis does 10 shows a week, dancing in Cirque du Soleil’s “Mystere” — at least until March, when he plans to step down as a Cirque performer to concentrate on teaching and directing.

At word of LVCDT’s possible demise, “certain dancers jumped ship immediately,” while “other dancers stuck around and wanted to fight for it,” Gaddis notes, recalling “lots of tears” in response to the news that “the company was really on the verge of closing.”

As a result, Friday’s “Celebrating 10 Years of Excellence” program packs even greater emotional punch with its combination of past highlights and “Lotus,” a Las Vegas premiere.

“Lotus” is a revision of a work commissioned two years ago by California’s Laguna Arts Festival and inspired by Lee Mullican’s 1967 painting “Lotus Land.” Gaddis’ previous version had original music by Alan Chan; Friday’s “Lotus” performance features a Vaughn Williams score.

The latest “Lotus” also showcases more dancers: a dozen in all.

“It’s a full company ballet” and “more in the neoclassical genre,” the choreographer explains. “I always like to do epic ballets with epic music,” which are especially suited to Reynolds Hall’s expansive stage, where “dancers can really stretch out and go for it.”

But “you can’t put too small of a ballet on The Smith Center stage,” Gaddis cautions, “because it gets eaten up by the stage.”

Gaddis himself will dance in some of the more than 20 excerpts from LVCDT’s greatest hits, including “Night Creature” (which Gaddis first danced as a member of the renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) and “Take Five,” performed to the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s jazz classic.

Former LVCDT dancers also will return Friday to revisit signature roles, including Erin Moya (in Ulysses Dove’s “Vespers”), Agnes Roux (soloing to “Don’t Explain” by Natalie Cole) and Vanessa Reyes (the “Ebony Suite” from “Spanish Harlem”).

Overall, “it’s going to be a fun evening,” Gaddis says.

An evening that, at times, marks a milestone he never expected LVCDT to reach.

“I didn’t think it was going to make it for 10 years,” Gaddis admits, “coming into a new city and breaking ground.”

Gaddis moved to Las Vegas to dance with Cirque 14 years ago; following in the steps of many Strip performers, he founded LVCDT as a creative outlet.

“I don’t feel like I’m doing anything new,” he says, adding that, “if it wasn’t for art organizations like mine, Cirque would not have the artists that it has.”

And while “a lot of people think dance is not a good sell in Vegas,” Gaddis notes, “nothing here in Vegas is a good sell — until you cultivate it.”

LVCDT launched in March 2006 and presented its first performance at the Cashman Center theater in September 2007, he recalls.

In addition to its Smith Center residency, the company has a second performance home at the West Las Vegas Library Theatre — and last year moved into its own Main Street studio in the downtown Arts District.

Gaddis has been down this road before, he notes, recalling his pre-Ailey years in the small Philadelphia company Philadanco, where he and his fellow dancers would drive for hours to “do six ballets a night” in small towns.

His subsequent years working with Ailey (and his successor, the equally legendary dancer-choreographer Judith Jamison) taught Gaddis “what quality is — it’s not about quantity.”

Now that Gaddis has decided LVCDT will continue beyond Friday’s 10th-anniversary kickoff performance, the quest for quality will continue throughout the troupe’s 10th-anniversary season and beyond.

“I didn’t think it was going to make it for 10 years,” Gaddis says of the troupe he founded. “I hope that we’ll be celebrating our 50th anniversary here.”

Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.