When Push Comes To … Pull Out - Twyla Tharp Dance Company's plans to move into Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn fall through - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, August, 2001 by Jody Sperling

Sometimes things don't work out as planned. Back in January, choreographer Twyla Tharp announced intentions to move her company into the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. The move was to be a cornerstone of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Local Development Corporation's project to grow a cultural arts district in the Fort Greene area. The BAM LDC was to spend $500,000 to renovate a huge, unused space at the church and lease it to Tharp, who planned to use it for open rehearsals, classes, lecture demonstrations, and informal performances. It was also to be a home base for expanding her current six-member ensemble into a larger repertory company to be called the Brooklyn Ballet. But no leases were ever signed, and Tharp, after crunching the numbers, changed her mind.

Her ambitious ideas, she realized, were not economically feasible without a similarly ambitious fund-raising effort. Potential income from ticket sales was limited, as the 6,500-square-foot space could hold only 200 seats. (Tharp had hoped to re-zone for 300, but permission wasn't granted.) "Raising money for brick and mortar is not what I do," says Tharp, whose company currently operates with no formal administration and no fund-raising staff. "Ultimately, my pursuit is the making of dances."

Harvey Lichtenstein, chairman of the BAM LDC, speculates that Tharp "bit off more than she could chew." He wishes that "she could do all the things she wanted to do," but acknowledges that "if she didn't feel she could, for whatever reason, it's just as well that she did what she did."

The church's Rev. David Dyson is also disappointed by Tharp's decision, but, he points out, it's "too good of a space in too hot of an arts area to lie fallow for long." At press time, BAM LDC and the church were seeking another tenant. Both Dyson and Lichtenstein said they hoped the space would be used for dance, but that other arts groups were also being considered.

Tharp, meanwhile, is still renting various studios on an hourly basis. She asserts, though, that everything she had planned to do in Brooklyn, she's been doing in one way or another for more than thirty years. So how important is having a home base to her? "Extremely important," she says, "but my first priority is to the work, then next the dancers, and back somewhere else is the studio where I work.... Would I like somewhere to park my stuff? Sure, but I'd rather schlep than be in debt."