Dancers Mobilized to Save Space

On September 12, the College announced its decision to convert a Quad basketball court into a new dance center, angering many Quad residents, some already upset at a lack of recreational space.

Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 accused College administrators of trying to “trick” Quad students by taking away space without their consent.

But there was little he or anyone else could do. What few realized at the time was that a small group of dancers, working behind the scenes, had carefully and methodically won over top administrators to their cause over a year long period.

Armed with fact-filled binders, media savvy and a finely-tuned pitch, the group of six took a once-obscure issue—the impending loss of dance space—and made finding a new dance center one of the College’s top priorities.

In the process, they may have set a new precedent for how to get something done at University President Lawrence H. Summers’ Harvard.

“They made me realize with their numbers and with their stories how important dance was to a large part of the Harvard community,” Summers wrote in a statement. “They modelled effective student advocacy.”

Losing Space

In December 2002, five undergraduate dancers—Anne T. Hilby ’05, Rebecca J. Alaly ’04-’05, Adrienne M. Minster ’04, Anna K. Weiss ’03 and Ryuji Yamaguchi ’03—along with Business School student Elizabeth Darst ’00—sat down in Summers’ office and handed him a 100-page binder filled with charts and statistics demonstrating why dance needs a home at Harvard.

The group had prepared for weeks for the meeting, and had even assigned each other certain lines to recite to Summers.

Summers said the dancers’ presentation “was as thorough and thoughtful as any I have received at Harvard.”

Playing to Summers was a prime goal of the dancers’ strategy.

“We know that President Summers responds to excellence,” Alaly says. “We needed to show him what dance at Harvard has achieved. He’s also an economist, so we included several numbers and statistics.”

Summers’ endorsement of their plan represents a striking turnaround from a few years ago when it wasn’t apparent that many at the College knew or cared that the historic center of dance at Harvard—the Rieman Center—would be turned over to Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2005.

When Harvard merged with Radcliffe in 1999, they turned over the old gymnasium to be used as a conference room by the Institute.

During her sophomore year, Minster remembered the lease and became concerned with the future of Rieman.

The dance center was “horribly overlooked,” she said. “No guarantees were made about whether 10,000 square feet of space would be replaced.”

And for awhile, enough was happening in the dance world to distract others who might be concerned.

In the spring of 2000, renowned choreographer Elizabeth Bergmann signed on as director of the dance programs, infusing dance at Harvard with new vitality.

Hilby, who participated in the Freshman Arts Program the year after Bergmann was hired, said “the details were hardly understood by incoming students.”

“I think it would be safe to say that most of the students who take dance had no idea,” Alaly said.

But a critical few were aware of the changes in store for Rieman, and their concerns coalesced as they came together to work on the dance show “Ex-Rated” in the fall of 2002.

Minster says that the buzz surrounding Ex-Rated served as a “launching pad.” “We had the press,” she says, “and from there we moved into a more concrete plan.”

Choreographing a Response

The group’s first step was to schedule a meeting with former Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 to raise the issue.

“We wanted to approach the problem in a systematic and professional way and we wanted his advice and support,” Minster says.

Hilby says that she left this initial meeting feeling like there was a lot to learn about the technical intricacies involved in University space planning.

“After the first meeting with Illingworth, we decided we needed a dance summit meeting,” Minster says.

“We e-mailed all the open lists, the dance company directors, [the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Company]—basically everyone at the University who we thought would have an interest,” Hilby says.

But not everybody showed up.

From the many student groups on campus e-mailed, only about 20 students came to the summit.

“It was supposed to be a brainstorming meeting to tell them what was going on and figure out the best approach.” Minster says.

At the meeting, they decided to write an open letter to Summers and try to gain as many signatures as possible. “It was like our petition,” Minster says, “and it became all-consuming for a couple of weeks.”

Alaly recalls going to every dance class that met at Harvard to request signatures and personal letters.

Soon the open letter became known outside the dance world too.

“The campaign gave us credibility as a student group and made us known to the administration,” Minster explains. “After awhile I couldn’t sit down in the dining hall without someone, professors or students, asking me how the struggle was going.”

Minster says she realized at a meeting with Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby that “dance really wasn’t on the administrative radar screen, but that’s where we wanted it to be.”

“We were handed a list of priorities in the administrators’ minds,” Alaly recalls, “and that made me feel that we would have a ton of work.”

Kirby says he was impressed that the group “issued no demands” and “understood that there were no easy solutions.”

“They were critical in keeping the issue on the table,” says Office for the Arts Director Jack C. Megan. “They reminded all of us of the need to follow the problem, functioning almost like a conscience.”

The Summers Meeting

“It was our big sink or swim moment,” Hilby said of the group’s Mass. Hall visit.

The group decided to throw all of their weight into a presentation.

“We scrambled to organize binders and raise our level of professionalism,” Minster explains. “We had to tailor our presentation in a way that he would see our credibility. We weren’t coming in with solutions in mind, but we did have a list of needs that had to be met.”

The dancers stressed that they needed the space before the end of the lease on Rieman.

“A gap between spaces would destroy the program,” Hilby says.

They assigned each other specific pitches to present to Summers and, Minster says, their timing was uncannily precise. “There was a moment when he cut us off and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And just at that moment we were ready to go into that part of the presentation.”

Summers, Yamaguchi recalled, “gave us credibility and backing.”

That night, they celebrated with big hugs and dinner at Spice. “Nothing had been resolved, but we knew we had the ears and the respect of the administration,” Alaly says.

On to a Solution

“I was impressed with the work they had done putting together a report on the dance program, and their informed level of interest in a solution to the space issue,” said Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71.

The group also enlisted the help of alumni in the arts, writing letters to prominent graduates asking them for support. They won the help of John Rockwell ’62, the former editor of The New York Times arts section, who agreed to enlist the Harvard’s Board of Overseers–of which he is a member—to influence the administration.

The dancers began to invite administrators to dance performances, hoping to draw them into the community.

“They were really impressed,” Alaly remembers. “You could sort of see the wheels turning. It’s such a beautiful space and it seemed to have a profound effect on them.”

Hilby, Alaly and Weiss stayed in Cambridge last summer and continued the groups’ efforts.

“Our concern was that while we felt confident, we still hadn’t heard the announcement of one potential space,” Hilby explains.

But behind the scenes, Bergmann and Cathy McCormack at the Office for the Arts had been working to brainstorm potential spaces. They met with Hilby, Alaly, and Weiss as well as Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd, over the summer about the possibility of moving into the QRAC.

Hilby and Alaly will sit on a committee that will work to devise the appropriate renovations for the QRAC, ensuring that dancers have a continual influence in the evolution of dance space.

Council President Chopra, who is forming a committee of students to address space issues in the Quad, says Quad residents are not upset at the dancers because they realized the dancers also lost valuable space.

“I hope that students are focused now on how to improve the space in the QRAC not taken over by dance,” Chopra says.

According to Minster, winning space in the QRAC “is just one step” in a more-than-century long process. “It’s a turning point in the history of dance at Harvard and we are looking forward to watching it thrive,” she says.

—Staff writer Wendy D. Widman can be reached at widman@fas.harvard.edu.