Fern Adair Conservatory, home to generations of performers, closing after 43 years

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, as always.

But there aren’t many always days left for the denizens of Miss Fern’s neighborhood, more formally known as Fern Adair Conservatory of the Arts.

That’s because, after more than 43 years in Las Vegas, Adair is retiring — and her namesake studio, at 3265 E. Patrick Lane, is closing its doors at the end of the month.

Classes — in everything from music, dance and theater to gymnastics and martial arts — continue through Tuesday.

While the moving has started, Adair says, she and Ray Criddle, her husband of 51 years, are trying to keep things as they’ve always been for what’s left of their run.

“This Isn’t a Lobby; It’s a Neighborhood — Miss Fern ’04” reads the sign hanging on a wall behind the boutique, where there’s a half-price clearance sale on pink ballet slippers, sequined leotards and sparkly wall decals depicting dancers in action.

Inside the gym, a visiting cheer team prepares for a competition, while a teacher coaches a student through an aerial ring routine.

Dance and music studios await their next classes and rehearsals, with participants following in the footsteps of such Strip headliners as Celine Dion, Donny and Marie Osmond, and Britney Spears (who sometimes would stop by to lead classes).

The conservatory also has hosted auditions for Cirque du Soleil, cruise ships, even prospective ringmasters for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Plaques and proclamations — from politicians and nonprofit groups — line the hallway. (Through the years, the conservatory has raised almost $500,000 for Make-a-Wish Foundation, Ronald McDonald House and other causes.)

A purple quilt — featuring T-shirts commemorating the conservatory’s annual “Concert Fantasy” extravaganzas — also hangs in the hallway, along with photos recalling regulars past and present, from Russia’s legendary Bolshoi Ballet to Usher to Mr. Las Vegas himself, Wayne Newton, who signed his photo with the inscription, “I love you and thanks for all you do and all that you are.”

OFFER THEY COULDN’T REFUSE

When Adair and Criddle announced the conservatory’s closure this month, “everyone (was) saying, ‘We’re so happy for you, but this can’t be,’ ” Adair notes, adding that alumni and current students are “very sad. We are, too. We’d love to have seen it continue.”

But when she and her husband got an offer they couldn’t refuse for the building from the owner of a fire protection company, “within three days, it was a done deal,” she says.

And, suddenly, the countdown-to-closure clock was ticking.

“This place has to be empty by Feb. 10,” Adair says. “It’s a surreal blur right now.”

Beyond the boutique clearance, she and Criddle will sell all the conservatory equipment, right down to the shock-absorbing sprung floors.

Behind a storage-room door, teacher and choreographer Andrew Phillips — who’s been at the conservatory for about six months — sorts through “close to a thousand” donated costumes.

Stars-and-stripes outfits from the long-gone “Hello America!” Glittery headpieces from the late, great “Folies Bergere.” Even roller skates from a conservatory show at the Orleans Arena.

Adair plucks one black-and-white tutu from the pile — a piece she plans to give to a just-graduated student, who’s now at UCLA on scholarship. “We’re going to pay to see her on Broadway,” Adair predicts. (She’d be the latest in a long line of conservatory alumni performing everywhere from the Houston Ballet to Chippendales at the Rio.)

HISTORY MIRRORS GROWING COMMUNITY

For Phillips, the history sets the conservatory apart from other dance schools. “Some studios are just a business. With Fern Adair, you can just tell — it’s very family oriented. You can see the history on the walls.”

And on the floors, where stacks of photographs — posed group shots of grinning girls decked out in tights and tutus — were being readied for distribution to now-grown alumni.

The conservatory’s current location opened in 1989, but Adair — a former tap dancer in USO shows — moved to Las Vegas in the 1970s, after attending a dance teachers’ convention in Las Vegas.

“I fell in love with the town and the freedom,” recalls Adair, who sold her Southern California dance schools before moving here. “I felt there was a future in Las Vegas.”

Her first studio, which she opened in 1974, was at Tropicana Avenue and Pecos Road.

“We started with one little store,” Adair remembers. “A few years later, we had eight stores — and we said, ‘We need to build our own building.’ ”

As that building grew, so did the range of conservatory offerings.

“Nobody wants my job,” says Adair, only half in jest, as she ponders the 12-plus-hour days she generally works at the studio. Not counting the few hours she logs on the computer before reporting for duty to her office, which she shares with several costumed dance dolls and numerous inspirational messages.

Clearly, inspiration is a watchword for Adair; the license plate on the blue-gray Lincoln Town Car she and Criddle drive reads “NSPIRE.”

With 1,200 weekly dance lessons through the years, that’s a lot of inspiration.

LEADING WITH A BIG HEART

Former student Renee McKinley-Perkins remembers her eight years at the conservatory — especially the bus tours, during which “Miss Fern would rent two charter buses” to transport students to malls, retirement homes and Boys and Girls Clubs for five performances in one day.

“Using their talent to touch hearts,” Adair says of the tours. “Whether they’re going to be dancers or not, they’re going to be beautiful people.”

For McKinley-Perkins, it’s those beautiful people who make the conservatory special.

“They genuinely cared about you and what was going on in your life,” she says — as McKinley-Perkins discovered, at 16, when the grandmother who raised her had “a massive stroke that nearly took her life.” Because her grandmother “wasn’t able to walk anymore, let alone work,” McKinley-Perkins knew she could probably only afford one dance class a month.

That is, until Adair called McKinley-Perkins into her office and informed her “she was going to put me on a full-ride scholarship,” which meant “I could take as many dance classes as I wanted for free,” McKinley-Perkins says. “She didn’t want to see my talent go to waste. I’m tearing up now just thinking about it.”

Martha Hurst, still going strong at 95, has been leading an “Aerobic Fun!” class at the conservatory for 28 years, when Desert Springs Hospital announced it would no longer fund the program.

The conservatory, Hurst says, has “touched thousands of lives” — which she’s reminded of whenever she wears a conservatory jacket while shopping and encounters parents and grandparents of former students eager to share their memories of Adair’s conservatory.

“It never fails,” Hurst says. “They all praise the background of the conservatory,” in part “because their standards have always been so high.”

Tony nominee Robert Torti (host of CNBC’s “The Filthy Rich Guide”), whose Las Vegas credits include “Rock of Ages,” discovered the conservatory when he and fellow cast members rehearsed Planet Hollywood’s short-lived “Surf the Musical” there. He and wife DeLee Lively have taught musical theater there for six months.

“It’s like old-school, back-in-the-day” studios Torti remembers from New York and Los Angeles, he says. “Nostalgic. Everyone’s danced on those floors. It’s sad to see places like that go.”

Adair and Criddle know the feeling.

“It’s a happy place — but it’s a little sad right now,” Adair acknowledges.

They’ll “miss the spirit of the conservatory,” she adds. “Not Ray and I, but the families. We’ll miss applauding the successes of our kids.”

Through the decades, “this has been our life — we’ve given everything we could give,” Adair says. “It’s time for Ray and Fern now.”

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