Chelsea’s dance district gets a new troupe

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 9 / November 24 -30, 2006

chelsea: arts&lifestyles

By Susan Yung

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel
Dancer Jared Kaplan holding dance company leader Nicholas Leichter in his new dance studio, nld_space

The familiar, haunting strains of Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” filled the air and the black-clad dancers began to move with an air of menacing prowess, pulsing and pivoting sharply. The location was in Chelsea, but it was not at one of the renowned dance presenters that have made the neighborhood a hot destination for performance, including The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, or The Kitchen. Rather, it was a convivial open house inaugurating the new headquarters for nicholasleichterdance, and the performance was an informal showing of a commission by the Brooklyn Philharmonic destined for the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February.

The studio, called nld_space, is located in The Heywood, a residential building at 263 Ninth Avenue (at 26th Street). The modestly-sized dance studio occupies the partly below-ground lower level. A gallery space on the second level will house exhibitions by independent artists or in partnership with galleries such as Tabla Rasa in Sunset Park.

Nicholas Leichter and his eponymous company celebrate their tenth anniversary this year, a landmark that marks the passage from “emerging” to “established.” Marya Wethers, the company’s manager, spoke of the realization of the studio concept. “Nicholasleichterdance has a major individual donor who asked Nick what the company needed. Nick mentioned that the company was looking for rehearsal space and the conversation progressed from there.”

Nld_space’s juxtaposition of dance and art underscores a Chelsea trend that’s been in the works for a while. Dance Theater Workshop features exhibitions in its lobby, which also houses a concession of the Chocolate Bar. The Kitchen has a regular slate of aesthetically ambitious exhibitions in addition to its roster of performances, in no small part because the director is Debra Singer, who was previously a curator at The Whitney Museum.

Nld_space is also a new neighbor to Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, which opened earlier this year at 547 West 26th Street. It is situated in two barn-shaped ex-garages previously occupied by photographer Annie Leibovitz. Cedar Lake rents out its theater, but only for non-dance and theater events such as meetings and fashion world functions. In addition to performances for which regular tickets are sold, the company has been holding casual, popular free showings on select Thursdays.

In fact, Thursdays have become an informal kind of “fiesta day” in Chelsea. Many art galleries hold their exhibition opening receptions on Thursday evenings, and events such as nld_space’s open house and Cedar Lakes’ free showings are scheduled to coincide with the openings. The atmosphere can be electric, a bit like Halloween trick-or-treating for the cultural-minded.

The symbiosis between dance and art makes sense given the need by both genres for a certain minimum space requirement, the visual/spatial nature of both, and the blurring of boundaries by performance art.

But nld_space is also a welcome addition to the neighborhood for more practical reasons. As the dance landscape shifts inexorably away from high-priced Manhattan to the far reaches of Brooklyn and Queens, it represents one of the few remaining dance studios available for hourly rent, at subsidized rates of $11 to $13 per hour, with office and studio hours on weekdays from 10am to 9pm. The studio rentals will be another source of income in the precarious finances of running a dance company. Nicholasleichterdance also foresees holding informal showings and performances in the studio for works in process and small-scale events.

As Nicholas Leichter noted, “It is so important to have a consistent place to be able to work and develop — and work on process — not to mention to work in an area that’s so easily accessible. That wasn’t part of the mission initially, but now I realize we have such a neutral space, a central point between upper Manhattan and Brooklyn, where a lot of dancers are working, as well as for the people in the community.”