Student attempts to win regular dance space in the Loeb and Hasty Pudding building have not resulted in viable options either.

A report in May 2000 by a group of students requested that the American Repertory Theater (ART) grant dance a yearly slot on the mainstage in addition to the four currently accorded to the HRDC.

The ART rejected the proposal.

“While I am sympathetic to the needs of the dance community, I am naturally more responsive to the theatre groups currently using the Loeb,” Loeb Drama Center Director Robert J. Orchard writes in an e-mail. “These groups already want and deserve additional stage time.”

While they do not have a consistent slot, dancers have won space in the Loeb, for Ex-Rated and a Mainstage production last fall, by going through HRDC’s application process.

And Orchard says the promise of additional theater space elsewhere could bring dance to the Loeb.

“The only fair way for the dance community to have regular access to the Loeb is to have alternative spaces for either the HRDC or the ART to work,” he writes. “The renovation of the Hasty Pudding Theatre might provide for an opportunity in this area.”

The dilapidated Pudding building—which was bought by Harvard in 2000 and has been awaiting renovation ever since—had been considered a possible future space for dance.

The dance community’s proposal to the ART in May 2000 also listed technical specifications to bring dance to the Pudding space.

But Megan says the building’s small size did not allow the needed expansion of the stage in order to accomodate dance.

Without a concrete replacement on the horizon, dancers say they don’t know what will become of their program.

“I see a decline,” Shelby says. “You’re going to lose dancers because there’s not going to be as much space.”

Upping the Tempo

This loss would be significant, dancers say, because the program has—particularly in recent years—attracted students with a future in professional dance.

Shelby, who plans on pursuing dance professionally in New York City after she graduates, says she chose Harvard’s liberal arts program although the school is not known for dance.