I have a secret: Last year, when I was a first-year eagerly awaiting my housing fate, I wanted to be quadded. I half-joked about it once to one of my blockmates, who responded with such a horrified expression that I sheepishly apologized, tried to assure him that I had not in fact cursed our chances of getting into Adams House, and never mentioned it again. When we actually did get assigned to Adams House, I celebrated with the rest of my blockmates, yet I worried about the one downside of living in a River house.

As a student dancer involved in Harvard University’s Dance Program, I had heard about the upcoming move of the program from Radcliffe’s Agassiz House, where the Dance Program has resided for over 40 years, to a new facility in the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC). While taking the shuttle to class every morning was an unpleasant thought, I found it much more appealing than having to take the shuttle back to a River house after an exhausting late-night dance rehearsal.

However, Harvard’s Dance Program, which is overseen by the Office for the Arts (OFA), currently faces issues much more significant than my anticipatory attempts at memorizing shuttle schedules. The QRAC construction plans are over budget. With increasing numbers of talented dancers on campus, there are not enough slots in performances to accommodate those interested.

As a dancer, this obviously means more to me than the average Harvard student, but at over 700 members strong, the student dance community has traditionally had a perhaps disproportionately small presence on Harvard’s campus. In funding the move to the QRAC, the administration is taking a big step in lessening this disparity.

DANCING IN THE DARK

Entering Harvard’s dance program at Harvard last fall, I encountered a situation that had been developing for several years. The impetus for the move to the QRAC started in 1999, when the new dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Drew Faust decided to reclaim the buildings of Radcliffe for the Institute, including Agassiz House and the Rieman Center, which Harvard’s Dance Program had been renting from the Institute for offices and studio/performance space.

Upon learning of the impending eviction of the Dance Program, Harvard Dance Program Director Elizabeth Bergmann and a small ad hoc committee of undergraduate dancers began searching for a new space.

“Originally I wanted the whole QRAC,” laughs Bergmann. The committee of current and former student dancers, Rebecca J. Alaly ’04-’05, Elizabeth M. Darst ’00, Anne T. Hilby ’05-’06, Adrienne M. Minster ’04, Anna K. Weiss ’03, and Ryuji Yamaguchi ’03 submitted a proposal full of other ideas, such as using the Loeb Theater for some performance runs.

The student committee, Dance Program staff, the OFA, and Harvard administrators eventually agreed to convert a small basketball court inside the QRAC into a new dance center, committing $4 million to the construction project.

While many undergraduates expressed vocal frustration over the lack of access to the QRAC for the remainder of the semester as construction takes place, most of the dance community was overjoyed. Though personally saddened by the upcoming loss of the Rieman Center and its quirky charm, in seeing construction begin I was glad to know that dance would still have a home at Harvard.

Plans for the conversion ran into unexpected obstacles. Fixing a leaky roof, allocating funds for geothermal heating, and problems with the building’s foundation pushed estimated construction costs $500,000 over budget, according to Bergmann.

Faced with the necessity of cutting this amount from the original project budget, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Nancy L. Maull announced several weeks ago that the administration had decided to eliminate air conditioning from the construction plans.

I, like many dance students, have suffered through numerous summer dance programs in studios without air conditioning. In pre-professional summer dance classes I have seen teachers temporarily stop class to mop the puddles of sweat off the floor in order to prevent us, the dancers, from injuring ourselves through slipping. While I know that it is indeed possible, although extremely tiring, stifling, and ridiculously sweaty to take dance classes in a hot, humid room, I have never danced in or attended a single summer performance which was not air conditioned.

On March 21, several senior deans of the Harvard University administration informed the OFA that construction of the new dance center would begin over undergraduate Spring Break, still without air conditioning. However, after weeks of vocal dissent from the student committee, Dance Program administrators, and OFA staff, the [finance offices of] the Faculty of Arts and Sciences finally agreed to put air conditioning back into the construction plans. Bergmann, Larson, Weiss, and Hilby received this information last Tuesday morning, to the delight of my fellow dancers.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS