Kelly Roth & Dancers of Las Vegas, above, Threshhold Dance Theatre of Las Vegas and Moving Arts Dance Company of San Francisco will perform at this weekend's eighth annual Dance in the Desert Festival. Threshhold Dance Theatre of Las Vegas Moving Arts Dance Company of San Francisco

Dance companies from Southern California, New York City, San Francisco, Michigan and Arizona join performers and companies from Las Vegas at the eighth annual Dance in the Desert Festival today and Saturday at the Community College of Southern Nevada's Cheyenne campus.

In addition, the festival will honor celebrated dancer and choreographer Murray Louis, who will receive an award at Saturday night's performance. Former students and performers in the Murray Louis Dance Company, founded in 1953, are scheduled to attend, says festival founder and organizer Kelly Roth.

Roth was a Louis dance student from 1976 to 1984 and was a dancer in Louis' company in 1978-79.

"He said I should leave him and start my own dance company," Roth says, which he did in 1978. Kelly Roth & Dancers has been in existence ever since and is currently at CCSN. "He let me use his studio. He was very generous."

Louis' talent reached far and wide, Roth says. "Just about anybody in modern dance in the last 30 or 40 years has been influenced by him."

Roth describes Louis as having a "very puckish character. He perpetually has a childlike wonder about motion, and about life. He was always very specific about showing the dance and not the dancer. He was very tough and demanding."

Among the companies scheduled to perform are Butterworth Dance Company, Metropolitan Ballet and Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre, all from Southern California; San Francisco's Moving Arts Dance; Aerial Dance Theatre from Michigan; Desert Dance Theatre, from Arizona; and Threshhold Dance Theatre, CCSN's Concert Dance Company and Dance Ensemble, and Kelly Roth & Dancers of Las Vegas.

Individual performers include Julie Fotheringham, Marko Westwood, Teresa Martinez and Janis Brenner.

Also, dance videos created by the Mimi Garrard Dance Company of New York City will be shown.

General admission tickets are $10 for one show; $18 for any two shows; and $24 for all three shows. Tickets for seniors and students are $8, $14 and $18.