Why I Teach Dance at Attack Theatre in Lawrenceville

At a quarter to one on a Saturday the sprung floor at Attack Theatre is cool under my palms, and I am kneeling at the edge of it with a speaker, a phone, and the one cable in my bag that reaches the outlet only if the speaker sits a foot to the left of where I put it, which I correct every week and every week forget. The door onto 45th Street stays propped for the first few minutes, so the room holds a little of Lawrenceville: a bus braking at the corner, a bicycle bell, somebody’s dog objecting to something on the sidewalk. Then the first person stands in the doorway with a water bottle in one hand and their shoes already half off, and I can usually tell from how they hold the bottle whether they have been in a studio before.

People ask why I teach a beginner class in a professional company’s studio instead of somewhere smaller, and the answer is the room: what the floor does, who keeps it, and where it sits.

The floor

A sprung floor is built in layers over a cushioned base so that it gives slightly when weight lands on it and returns that weight on the way up, and the first thing most people do when they walk onto it in socks is bounce, twice, without deciding to, because the surface answers them in a way a gym floor or a kitchen floor never has. For someone who has not jumped since grade school, the difference between a floor that gives and a floor that does not is the difference between a landing the knees find interesting and one they refuse to repeat, and most people in this class have not jumped since grade school.

The same give changes the first ten minutes, which we spend lying down. A body on a hard floor braces against it, whereas a body on a sprung floor can let the floor take the weight of the skull and the sacrum and the heels, which is the whole point of beginning that way.

The company

Attack Theatre is a contemporary dance company, and this studio is its own, which means the room I set up in on a Saturday afternoon is a room built for people who dance for a living, with the mirrors and the ceiling height and the floor to prove it. A borrowed corner of a gym tells a beginner one thing about what is expected of them before anyone speaks; a studio with a working company’s name on the door tells them something else, and I want the room to say that this is a real place to dance and that they are allowed in it.

A company that opens its own space to community classes is also saying something about who the space is for, and on Saturdays that includes someone in their sixties who has not danced since a wedding decades ago, someone in their twenties who dances in their kitchen and nowhere else, and two friends who signed up together so that neither could back out. None of them would have walked into a company studio on their own, and the class is what makes the walking in ordinary.

The neighborhood

The studio sits at 212 45th Street, a short walk from Butler Street, with the Allegheny River a few blocks north, and Lawrenceville is a neighborhood people already come to for coffee or for dinner, which means the trip to class is a trip most of them already know how to make. Some walk over from Butler with a coffee still in hand, others bike or take the bus, and a few circle for parking and come in apologizing for being four minutes late, and I tell them that the first part of class is lying on the floor and that they have missed nothing they cannot catch up on by lying down.

After class the door opens onto the same street, louder now that it is mid-afternoon, and people stand on the sidewalk for a few minutes with their shoes back on and their faces still warm, deciding whether to head to Butler for something to eat. A few blocks north the river moves past without any interest in what we did.

What the class is

The class is called Come and Dance with Me! and it meets Saturdays from 1 to 3 pm; the class itself runs ninety minutes inside that window, so nobody has to arrive breathless or leave mid-sentence. We do somatics, conditioning, choreography, and improvisation, in that rough order, to music I pick because it is fun to move to. No dance experience is required, all bodies are welcome, and the series costs $125, or $25 for a single class if you want to try one first. If you have accessibility needs, call or text me before your first class so that I can set up the room with you in mind, and you can find the details on the dance page.

Bring water and socks or bare feet, and if you arrive early, you can watch me move the speaker a foot to the left so that the cable reaches the outlet, which it still will not do from where I put it first.