Minster says she thinks Ex-Rated showcases the high quality of dance across Harvard—something that’s not generally well-publicized on campus.

Tickets for every show—700 tickets in total—sold out three days after going on sale, Hoyos says. “Harvard students are doing really amazing things choreographically,” Minster says. “It’s got to be one of the most amazing dance communities in the U.S.”

Moving in Sync

But no central organization connects the different clubs and companies that make up this community.

Although OFA has a dance program that publishes a 28-page guide to dance opportunities available on campus, it has no decision-making authority over the student-run groups.

Yamaguchi says the OFA mainly mentors individual dancers as opposed to working with student dance companies.

“There’s not as much interaction between student companies and the OFA as there should be,” he says.

The result of this structure is a lack of unity within the community, according to Christina M. Shelby ’04.

“The companies are so polarized,” she says. “There are very few actors or dancers who belong to more than one company.”

Some feel that the lack of structure within the dance community hinders their work.

“I think it’s impacted all groups negatively,” says Claire S. Sulmers ’03, the head of the Caribbean Club Dance Troupe. “You don’t really have dancers going into different groups. It might be better for the community if we had a network.”

Minster says this fragmentation decreases the dance program’s visibility to the administration—an issue that is particularly important in lobbying for a new space.

“It’s difficult for the administration to see how much dance there is,” she says.

“Dancers…don’t have as much power, because they don’t have a single identity,” choreographer Tina Y. Tanhehco ’05 agrees. “It makes it more difficult to fight for space—it’s disjointed. All the dancers are not happy about it…but we don’t know who to turn to.”

OFA Dance Director Elizabeth Bergmann says the dance program could benefit from better organization and more opportunities for faculty mentorship to provide more continuity.