A New Home
It required a nine-year
search, but the East Village Dance Project finally found a home, and opened its
pristine, full-time space at 55 Avenue C to the community Jan. 3. Founded in
1997, EVDP offered ballet and modern classes to neighborhood kids ages 4 to 18,
but always used studios that belonged to someone else, with limited hours
available. Now, artistic director/ballet teacher Martha Tornay and her students
have a place where they can settle in and truly feel at home—and have expanded
the schedule to include adult classes, more ballet and modern, as well as jazz
classes that the teen students had requested.
“We have probably seen
every former restaurant or clothing shop between Avenue D and Broadway, 14th
Street and Houston,” says Bonnie Sue Stein, a veteran dance and theater
producer who is executive director of GOH Productions, the nonprofit
organization under which EVDP operates. “We wanted to stay in the neighborhood.
The opportunity to move to Brooklyn came up, or uptown, or partnering in all
kinds of different situations, but we didn’t want to leave the neighborhood
because that’s where the kids are. This is really going to be a community
studio.”
EVDP began with four
students in a space on East Fifth Street that is now a Japanese noodle shop.
“After a few years we moved over to 440 Lafayette, but at some point that
became an NYU space so we had to leave,” Stein says. “Then we were at Rod
Rodgers’ space for about 10 years, on East Fourth Street between Second and
Third avenues, but again there was a limited amount of time that we could use
those studios.” EVDP only offered classes four days a week; now classes take
place every day except Sunday. The EVDP Junior Company, for which Tornay as
well as some students create works, can now rehearse on Saturdays. Only in
existence for two years, they have already performed as part of La MaMa Moves
(and will again in May) and the HOWL Festival.
An inaugural week of free
classes culminated with an open house on Sunday that had the studio and lobby
packed with students and neighborhood visitors. Councilwoman Rosie Mendez
stopped by and spoke to help launch the new space. There was much for everyone
to admire: the rich mahogany doors for the dressing rooms, office and restroom;
the chandelier in the entry area and the spacious 45-by-25-foot studio, with
windows at the back and a Harlequin Dance Floor over custom-designed sprung
wood.
Tornay’s husband, Chris
Tornay, is a contractor who did much of the renovation work gratis, sometimes
joined by his workers on weekends. “We never would have been able to do it
without him,” Stein asserts. While
working on major renovations of large apartments, he would locate items the
owners no longer wanted and were willing to donate to EVDP. He found such gems
as those elegant mahogany doors and the soundproof, 8-foot glass doors to the
studio, which Stein says would have cost $10,000 each. “The chandelier,
cabinets—all of this was donated,” Stein notes. The large studio mirrors came
from Janet Panetta, who recently closed her dance studio.
The storefront space had
for several decades been Olivo’s, a store selling yarn, dry goods, hats and
clothing. “I knew the man running the store,” says Stein. “When he finally
realized he had to close—he wasn’t doing enough business—I asked what was going
to happen. He said, ‘It’s a cooperative building, and they really want
something different. They don’t want a restaurant or bar, like most of the
other buildings in the neighborhood.’ It was pretty amazing to hear that. How
many more bars do we need?”
In time, EVDP received
100-percent approval and has formed a partnership with Movement Research Inc.,
which needed new office space, and uses the studio 20 hours a week when EVDP
classes are not in session.
Stein has already noticed a
new sense of pride among EVDP students now that the space is really a home.
“Our teens are helping to run the reception desk [and] mopping the floor,
they’re really learning. It’s pretty great to see them taking ownership and
it’s empowering. The program has always been about dance, but not only about
dance. Martha really teaches them more to be individual human beings, to think
for themselves.
“We have a strong
scholarship program and a policy that anybody can come in. We’re not going to
turn anyone away for lack of money, or lack of technique or body type. So our
constituency has grown to be pretty eclectic and diverse.”
55 Avenue C (betw. E. 4th
& E. 5th Sts.), 212-982-5751.