Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/138830
Serena Henry on tour with Smokey Robinson in 2011. RIGHT: The Academy is housed in what was once Las Vegas's oldest high school. PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF SERENA HENRY (ROBINSON) ABOVE: Art Deco gems listed on the National Register of Historic Places—were being used. LVA's original principal, Robert Gerye, remembers the early days, when the project met with vociferous community opposition. As Las Vegas High School was being relocated to a brand-new campus several miles away, at the foot of the Valley's Frenchman Mountain, some people just weren't ready for their memories to move with it. "They were looking at moving Las Vegas's oldest high school, where a lot of the most prominent people in town had gone to school," Gerye says. "Their memories were there, and their lives had been there, and they were afraid of what would happen to the building." Complaints were lodged with the Clark County School District's board of trustees, and many principals opposed the idea of a magnet academy, thinking that too many of the city's best and brightest would be siphoned from their schools. These days, LVA's student body has swelled from 735 to about 1,700, and the school boasts a graduation rate of 96 percent, compared to Nevada's lowest-in-the-country average of 62 percent. (It's a public high school, grades 9 through 12, with attendees chosen based on their auditions and their academic records.) About 84 percent of its graduates go on to pursue postsecondary education, and the Academy has even been recognized as one of the top high schools in America by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. LVA is a sanctuary for all things artistic, offering majors in dance, visual arts, photography, theater, technical theater, and music, which includes programs in orchestra, band, choir, piano, guitar, world jazz studies, and even mariachi. With the Strip less than four miles away and tons of shows being produced all over town, students are afforded special opportunities to interact with working performers on a regular basis. Its choir, for example, sang with the rock band Foreigner at Sunset Station in May, and some students were chosen from a Frankie Moreno master class to sing with him at the Stratosphere. Country stars LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood have both stopped by to talk shop, and AEG and its performers, including Elton John, Celine Dion and Jerry Seinfeld have donated tickets, equipment, and tens of thousands of dollars this year alone. Last fall, the touring cast of the Broadway smash Wicked visited the school while the show was at the Smith Center, just a mile away. VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 91 088-093_V_Feat_FAME_Sum13.indd 91 6/19/13 10:40 AM