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For dancers at the old Dance Center of Columbia College, these feelings had always been accompanied by an additional fear: Will I stub my toe and crash in the dark on my way from the dressing room to the stage?
She wasn’t exaggerating. A 1990 graduate of the dance department, Cole went on to manage the Dance Center’s box office, run accounts payable, teach modern dance there, and perform with the resident troupe, Mordine & Company Dance Theatre. She’s now the program manager at Columbia’s Office of Community Arts Partnerships as well as a choreographer and director of her own company, the Dance COLEctive.
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On a recent Saturday night I encountered local dance historian and critic Ann Barzel at the Siam Cafe, just a half block south. She succinctly summed up the center’s history: “Neighborhood movie theater becomes neighborhood dance theater.” She said that in the 1970s New York Times dance critic John Martin “called it the finest dance theater in America, though I’m not sure I want to walk around alone at night.”
“I will not miss tiptoeing through the audience to enter the stage space,” reflects Jan Erkert. “It will feel kind of grown-up to walk onstage without sneaking on first.”
