“The dance group at FAS has expressed an interest in being in our building,” Carr says. “We would love to have them…It is much too early to say whether anything will happen and what it will look like if it does.”

College and OFA administrators say Carr met with them last week, and they are negotiating to see if they might find a workable space in the proposed building, on which Carr hopes to break ground this summer.

One major concern is Carr’s proposal to rent or lease space in the same building to the ART, on whose board of directors he serves.

Because of the tensions in the professional company and undergraduates in the Loeb Drama Center, administrators from the OFA and ART say they would be concerned about getting into another such relationship. And they wonder how there would be space for both entities and Carr’s own Market Theater company, though Carr insists there is “enough room in the building.”

ART Executive Director Robert Orchard says he has told Carr to pursue the undergraduate dance needs first and then return to the ART as a secondary possibility. Orchard says he would only accept a sharing arrangement if the two groups had their “own exclusive spaces.”

With the QRAC and Market Theater possibilities under close scrutiny from planners and arts administrators, McCormick and Bergmann say they’d still like to see discussion of a larger performance space than Rieman. McCormick says FAS planners are so concerned with “maintaining the status quo” that plans to construct a new building are unlikely, especially given the current fiscal climate.

Still, other spaces may unexpectedly become available. Radcliffe Executive Dean Louise Richardson says they may move operations currently housed at the old Bunting Institute buildings on Concord Ave. to an area closer to their main operations in Radcliffe Yard. While she says that plans are very tentative, several OFA administrators say these buildings, if acquired by FAS, could possibly make an good home for theater practice and visual arts.

But for now, there remains no clear plan for relocating Harvard’s student dancers.

And with exactly two years until Rieman is transferred back to Radcliffe, the clock is ticking.

—Staff writer J. Hale Russell can be reached at jrussell@fas.harvard.edu.