Dancers Break New Ground

I have a secret: Last year, when I was a first-year eagerly awaiting my housing fate, I wanted to be quadded. I half-joked about it once to one of my blockmates, who responded with such a horrified expression that I sheepishly apologized, tried to assure him that I had not in fact cursed our chances of getting into Adams House, and never mentioned it again. When we actually did get assigned to Adams House, I celebrated with the rest of my blockmates, yet I worried about the one downside of living in a River house.

As a student dancer involved in Harvard University’s Dance Program, I had heard about the upcoming move of the program from Radcliffe’s Agassiz House, where the Dance Program has resided for over 40 years, to a new facility in the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC). While taking the shuttle to class every morning was an unpleasant thought, I found it much more appealing than having to take the shuttle back to a River house after an exhausting late-night dance rehearsal.

However, Harvard’s Dance Program, which is overseen by the Office for the Arts (OFA), currently faces issues much more significant than my anticipatory attempts at memorizing shuttle schedules. The QRAC construction plans are over budget. With increasing numbers of talented dancers on campus, there are not enough slots in performances to accommodate those interested.

As a dancer, this obviously means more to me than the average Harvard student, but at over 700 members strong, the student dance community has traditionally had a perhaps disproportionately small presence on Harvard’s campus. In funding the move to the QRAC, the administration is taking a big step in lessening this disparity.

DANCING IN THE DARK

Entering Harvard’s dance program at Harvard last fall, I encountered a situation that had been developing for several years. The impetus for the move to the QRAC started in 1999, when the new dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Drew Faust decided to reclaim the buildings of Radcliffe for the Institute, including Agassiz House and the Rieman Center, which Harvard’s Dance Program had been renting from the Institute for offices and studio/performance space.

Upon learning of the impending eviction of the Dance Program, Harvard Dance Program Director Elizabeth Bergmann and a small ad hoc committee of undergraduate dancers began searching for a new space.

“Originally I wanted the whole QRAC,” laughs Bergmann. The committee of current and former student dancers, Rebecca J. Alaly ’04-’05, Elizabeth M. Darst ’00, Anne T. Hilby ’05-’06, Adrienne M. Minster ’04, Anna K. Weiss ’03, and Ryuji Yamaguchi ’03 submitted a proposal full of other ideas, such as using the Loeb Theater for some performance runs.

The student committee, Dance Program staff, the OFA, and Harvard administrators eventually agreed to convert a small basketball court inside the QRAC into a new dance center, committing $4 million to the construction project.

While many undergraduates expressed vocal frustration over the lack of access to the QRAC for the remainder of the semester as construction takes place, most of the dance community was overjoyed. Though personally saddened by the upcoming loss of the Rieman Center and its quirky charm, in seeing construction begin I was glad to know that dance would still have a home at Harvard.

Plans for the conversion ran into unexpected obstacles. Fixing a leaky roof, allocating funds for geothermal heating, and problems with the building’s foundation pushed estimated construction costs $500,000 over budget, according to Bergmann.

Faced with the necessity of cutting this amount from the original project budget, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Nancy L. Maull announced several weeks ago that the administration had decided to eliminate air conditioning from the construction plans.

I, like many dance students, have suffered through numerous summer dance programs in studios without air conditioning. In pre-professional summer dance classes I have seen teachers temporarily stop class to mop the puddles of sweat off the floor in order to prevent us, the dancers, from injuring ourselves through slipping. While I know that it is indeed possible, although extremely tiring, stifling, and ridiculously sweaty to take dance classes in a hot, humid room, I have never danced in or attended a single summer performance which was not air conditioned.

On March 21, several senior deans of the Harvard University administration informed the OFA that construction of the new dance center would begin over undergraduate Spring Break, still without air conditioning. However, after weeks of vocal dissent from the student committee, Dance Program administrators, and OFA staff, the [finance offices of] the Faculty of Arts and Sciences finally agreed to put air conditioning back into the construction plans. Bergmann, Larson, Weiss, and Hilby received this information last Tuesday morning, to the delight of my fellow dancers.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS

Both Dance Office staff and student dancers worry about the potential pitfalls of moving Harvard’s Dance Program to the Quad. “I hope the beautiful space will draw people out to the Quad,” Bergmann says with a smile, “If a student center is developed at Hilles, we could have a wonderful community environment.”

On the other hand, University expansion into Allston—farther away from the Quad—has student performers, including myself, worried about whether a beautiful facility will be enough to draw audiences all the way up Garden Street in future years, especially when we have received no information about whether Allston will include dance facilities. At rehearsals and dance classes, I have periodically heard dancers express concerns that while the campus’ center seems to be headed across the river, the student performing groups are being stranded in the Quad.

The new dance center in the QRAC will feature a state-of-the-art performance space which will double as a large dance studio, as well as offices for Dance Program administrative staff and an additional smaller dance studio.

The Dance Program will continue to utilize its other studio, Director’s Studio, which is located in the OFA building at 74 Mt. Auburn St.

While the new dance center at the QRAC will have one more studio than the Rieman Center, Bergmann doubts that this will be an adequate increase in available space. “If we had eight studios open from 4 p.m. to midnight, I bet they would all be filled,” says Bergmann. I am all too familiar with the problem of insufficient dance space, having resorted several times to holding rehearsals in small common rooms, hallways, and even my bedroom. “But what university has the luxury of eight studios?” Bergmann laments, “Space is a huge issue for dance on campus everywhere, not just at Harvard.”

Student and alumni dancers share Bergmann’s concerns about sufficient dance space on campus. Alumnus and longtime dancer Yamaguchi hopes that the University administration will not limit its support in expanding performance and rehearsal space to this current construction project.

“We still need more performance and studio space,” he says. “I hope the administration recognizes that there is a strong student interest in the arts, in dance, and responds adequately.”

While I must admit I share Yamaguchi’s desire for continued administrative support, in view of the realities of the school’s fiscal limitations, I am more concerned about the lack of foresight in selecting the location of the new space.

DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION

Student dancers’ concerns about insufficient rehearsal space may be partially due to the recent rapid growth in their sheer numbers. Bergmann says that when the OFA last investigated dance participation at Harvard in fall of 2002, they estimated participation in Harvard’s 23 student dance groups and various open classes to be 700 undergraduates, an astonishing 10 percent of the undergraduate population. She estimates that an up-to-date count would reveal an even larger number. In the past five years, enrollment in the OFA’s dance classes alone has doubled to approximately 400.

Since the OFA classes that I and other undergraduates take are also open to graduate students and other Harvard affiliates, this enrollment increase is not due to undergraduate interest alone. However, the majority of class-takers are undergraduates. Hilby says that several years ago her student committee estimated that approximately 20 percent of female undergraduates participate in dance classes or student dance groups.

Harvard Dance Program Coordinator Susan Larson says that she believes more would probably attend if their schedules fit the class times.

In addition to this explosion of students pursuing dance on campus, Harvard’s Dance Program has also experienced an increase in national attention. The newest student dance group, Harvard Contemporary Dance Ensemble (HCDE)—established and directed by Bergmann herself—has received an impressive set of honors.

At last year’s American College Dance Festival (ACDFA), a trio choreographed by Alaly was selected to be performed at ACDFA’s national gala in June 2004. And last summer, HCDE was also invited to perform at the legendary Jacob’s Pillow Theater in Becket, MA, one of the most well-regarded modern dance venues, a highly unusual accomplishment for non-professional student dancers.

Beyond simply supporting the dance events administrated by the Dance Program, Yamaguchi stresses the need for student-run groups to be supported and publicized just as strongly as Dance Program-run projects like Dancer’s Viewpointe and HCDE.

Alaly doubts that such support would be enough to keep student dance groups from becoming restrictive. She maintains that even the chance to perform in student-run dance groups has become increasingly competitive due to the higher-level dancers Harvard continues to attract in greater numbers.

“There’s more classes open to students, but there’s not as many performing opportunities for everyone because most are by audition,” she says. For instance, Harvard Ballet Company (HBC), a student group with which Alaly has been significantly involved, has responded to Harvard’s growing numbers of increasingly talented student dancers by becoming more selective about who gets to perform which kinds of dance pieces, and in deciding who gets to perform at all.

As a member of HBC, I have been generally satisfied with the roles in which I have been cast. However, every semester I hear the complaints of friends who desire to perform more complex roles than the ones which they have been given, and thoroughly believe they are capable of doing so. They bemoan the fact that that the prominent, technically demanding roles often go to the same small group of elite dancers, even when they say many other company members are equally capable of performing these roles.

Though numbers of dance students and performers grow ever larger, the question remains as to whether demand is exceeding supply.

Performances by HBC and Dancer’s Viewpointe regularly sell out, while less prominent groups have seen their fair share of empty seats. The fact that many dance performance runs do not sell out even tiny venues like the Adams Pool Theatre makes me wonder whether few people at Harvard are really interested in viewing student-produced dance works, or if inconsistent audience sizes are simply a result of varying levels of publicity for each show.

TAPPING TEACHERS

Aside from the increase in performances and technical training, academic dance classes have also been added in the past few years: Dramatic Arts 14, “Movement Design;” Dramatic Arts 15, “Movement for Actors and Directors;” and Dramatic Arts 16, “Dance as a Collaborative Art.” The experience I had when I took Dramatic Arts 16 last year fully satisfied my expectations for the aims of these courses: to educate through experience and experimentation.

Needless to say, I supported Larson and Bergmann’s desire to expand these academic offerings. Bergmann has already discussed the possibility of creating interdisciplinary performance studies classes with other faculty members, including Hans Tutschku, Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition, and various Dramatic Arts and VES professors. She said she received a positive, enthusiastic response to the idea, but the other faculty members all said they were already too busy to add such classes to their schedules.

Another obstacle to expanding Harvard’s academic dance offerings is student enrollment, which has been “disappointingly low,” according to Bergmann. There are six students currently enrolled in Dramatic Arts 16, and during the 2003-2004 school year, 11 students enrolled in Dramatic Arts 14, and 12 students enrolled in Dramatic Arts 16.

Bergmann believes this may be a result of too many concentration requirements, lack of interest in dance scholarship, or the fact that the courses do not fulfill any concentration or core requirement. I saw one clear reason for low enrollment last year, when several students enrolled in my Dramatic Arts 16 class dropped out of the course after several weeks, citing the unexpectedly heavy workload.

Nobody ultimately can account for the enormous disparity between the enrollment in dance courses and the expansion of participation in dance groups all around campus. Nevertheless, the overall growth of participation in dance speaks volumes about the need for this community to have its voice heard. That the administration has at last picked up the other line to hear the desperate cries of space-hungry performers is a hopeful sign; I can only hope that now we can keep them on the phone.

—Staff Writer Marin J. D. Orlosky can be reached at orlosky@fas.harvard.edu