To get a glimpse of Las Vegas’ homegrown cultural talent, look no further than the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts.
The CCSD magnet school is where students specialize in music, dance, theater, and the visual arts. And they’re not shy about showing you what they can do.
The school features more than 140 live performances a year, from student combos to large-scale theatrical shows like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which debuts at LVA on November 6.
"[Performance] is everything," says Megan Franke, a longtime music educator turned development director for LVA. "It's the centerpiece to what we do. We put on hundreds of performances and gallery shows a year. We don't have sports; I always joke [that] we would be horrible, we would not be competitive in any real sense. But our shows are literally world-class, professional-level."
Performances also include brief numbers at the school's quad during breaks. "It happens literally all the time," says Franke. "I always joke, we don't have fights, we have dance battles. It's like High School Musical on our campus."
The LVA’s biggest concert of the year, "Choose Love," happens October 29 at the Smith Center, the school’s 13th consecutive year at the performing arts center. Some 250 students will perform alongside nationally renowned talent like one-time Tiny Desk performer and modern classical act Eighth Blackbird.
"[Eighth Blackbird] is the feature item, but there are moments where [the group and the student band will] kind of riff off each other, and the band will step in and kind of throw back to the group," says John Seaton, LVA's director of bands and co-conductor for "Choose Love." He adds: "Having these people — who are really doing what the students aspire to someday — work with the students is just everything."
Megan Franke, development director, Las Vegas Academy; John Seaton, director of bands, Las Vegas Academy
