“It wouldn’t hurt to look at structure,” she says. “I sort of get the feeling that both theater and dance keep reinventing the wheel.”

But students say it is hard to form an umbrella organization without being in control of a dance performance space.

Dancers contrast their situation with that of theater—where all would-be directors must go through the HRDC to perform in the Loeb.

“It’s a bit difficult because it’s not like we have a theater to rent out to groups,” Minster says. “Everyone’s on their own to find space.”

Will Dance For Space

Indeed, ask a dancer on campus the biggest issue facing the dance community and she—or, occasionally, he—will most likely reply “space.”

Aside from Rieman, which under the current plans will be lost permanently as a dance venue in 2005, students have practice space in the Loeb, the OFA’s offices and a few Houses. Lowell Lecture Hall will become the only space on campus designed with dance in mind.

But even Lowell isn’t up to par, student say.

According to Shelby, Lowell is plagued by bad audience visibility and poor technical equipment.

Rieman, by contrast, was recently revamped with new seating and technical equipment.

“The space is perfect,” Bergmann says. “It’s too bad there couldn’t be some kind of compromise.”

But Tanhehco says she thinks dancers are prepared for a fight.

“We don’t want to anger the new dean into not giving us space,” she says. “But we also want the space to the point that we’d consider hunger strikes, chain ourselves to the building, picket.”

Short of a sit-in, Shelby J. Braxton-Brooks ’03 says dancers have not organized a response.

“Losing Rieman is still very new news,” she says. “People are still so much in shock.”