Under one roof: business and art rub shoulders at Vancouver's new dance center

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2002 by Allan Ulrich

MOST CANADIANS--AND I SPEAK AS AN AMERICAN WHO SPENT TWELVE FORMATIVE YEARS NORTH OF THE BORDER--SHARE ONE INFURIATING FLAW: THEY SEEM LOATH TO ADVERTISE THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE. EVERYONE, IN TIME, FOUND OUT ABOUT INSULIN AND MOLSON'S ALE, GLENN GOULD AND WAYNE GRETZKY. THIS YEAR, HOWEVER, THE CANADIANS MAY HAVE JUST DEVISED A SOLUTION FOR UNITING FRAGMENTED AND FRACTIOUS DANCE COMMUNITIES BY ADVANCING THE ART IN CITIES WHERE PERFORMERS ARE A PERENNIAL UNDERCLASS.

There's no reason for any participant to be shy about the Scotiabank Dance Centre, which rises seven stories above a formerly scruffy downtown Vancouver intersection. The building gleams in the sunlight at high noon and, thanks to its glass walls, grows transparent as the lights come on in the long, seductive British Columbia summer twilight. Yet the 32,000-square-foot complex--designed jointly by Architectura and Canada's living architectural legend, Arthur Erickson--is more than another pretty monument in the battle for urban renewal.

The project was dedicated by Canada's Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in August 2001 and opened officially by Scotiabank President Bruce Birmingham in September, a mere two years and four months after the selection of the site. The Dance Centre has emerged as a model for collaboration between the nonprofit sector and the business community. There's something symbolic about the structure: One side retains the temple-style facade of the Scotiabank branch, built in 1929 (when it was called Bank of Nova Scotia) and still functioning with a staff of two.

Erickson's airy inspiration clings to the older frontage (preserved as a Canadian "Heritage" structure) and extends down the side street, where dancers, their support staffs, and audiences will enter to participate in the artistic ferment of the new millennium. The bank still owns the land. The center holds the deed to the building, pays for its maintenance, keeps all funds from rentals of the plant, and has a twenty-nine-year lease on the site, with an option to renew.

MORE THAN A MODEL, THE SCOTIABANK DANCE CENTRE MAY turn out to be a formula. It took almost two decades, some very tenacious citizens, and heroic powers of persuasion to complete the job, and it is a saga from which American dance companies--perennially in quest of both professional rehearsal space and visibility--can learn much. The $6.6 million rehearsal and administrative facility (all figures are in U.S. dollars) has assigned permanent homes to five tenants, offers rehearsal rentals at a sliding scale to the community, and even provides a venue for performances in an intimate, 154-seat, black-box space in the basement. If additional money can be raised, this will evolve into a video-production studio.

Everything has been planned to reflect the multicultural milieu of what has often been deemed Canada's most beautiful city. The tenants include Ballet British Columbia, the province's most popular dance attraction; DanceArts Vancouver, a troupe run by veteran choreographer Judith Marcuse; New Performance Works, a management company for smaller groups, similar to New York's Pentacle; the Vancouver Ballet Society, which maintains a dance library and publishes Dance International, a quarterly magazine; and the Dance Centre, the administrative agency for the complex.

To accompany the Dance Centre's executive director, Mirna Zagar, on a tour of the facility's six double-height studios is to enter a world shimmering with promise. The largest studio measures 1,952 square feet and in width approximates the size of the proscenium in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, where Ballet British Columbia performs locally. The smallest, named for Marcuse, measures only 1,053 square feet and boasts a floor suitable for tap dancers.

It adjoins a roof garden where three dancers on this sultry August afternoon were rehearsing an aerial ballet, swinging into the ether with the West End high-rises serving as a magnificent backdrop. Throughout, the needs of dancers have been met: The third and fourth floors feature lockers, showers, lounges, a kitchen, washing machines, and a physiotherapy room.

Everywhere, the natural light is blinding. The double-sized windows ("They actually open!" exclaimed one tenant) in the administrative offices on the sixth floor almost make the occupants forget that their space is a bit cramped. The dancers' comfort comes before their managers'. That was intentional. And considering where some of the tenants have come from, nobody is complaining.

"WE USED TO RENT IN A BUILDING OVER ON WEST BROADWAY," SAID Ballet British Columbia's executive director, Kevin Myers, pointing across Granville Bridge. "The roof leaked; it was terribly expensive to heat in the winter. We had break-ins and the alarms were always going off. You should have seen the mold spores and the coffee and sweat stains on the carpet. And let's not mention the asbestos or the rattan curtains."

So, Ballet British Columbia, whose presence was essential to the Scotiabank Dance Centre, did not balk at the annual $41,000 rental. "Our job now," notes Myers, "is to get the word out that, although this building looks expensive, it isn't."