STEVIE ELLER DANCE THEATRE

This building is about making a place. It is about the integrations of art, movement, and architecture to create a magical experience. This 32,000 SF building is an expansion to the existing Ina A. Gitting's facility at the University of Arizona. The new 300-seat theatre is specifically designed to accommodate all dance performances at one campus venue. The expansion also provides theatre support space and additional laboratory / studio space for academic programs within the School of Dance. The design of the building seeks to embody the spirit of movement.

The design team, led by Donna and Jose, expressed movement within the architecture of the project. The soft upholstered space of the auditorium is a volume that rolls and moves to become an exterior surface that protects the glazing of the dance studio as a scrim. The stage is a dark back drop upon which performers play. Inside becomes outside as the mass of the house and stage fly tower become the dark back drop upon which the scrim pieces play. We studied how inside volumes become outside surfaces through topology and we introduced the idea of the three dimensional Mobius Strip. This was the form-generating device for the inside and the outside of the building. The woven wire mesh fabric scrim on the east elevation creates multiple readings. It is opaque and transparent. Students can 'hang out' on a catwalk between the scrim and the wall of the house beyond. It is the second means of egress from the dance studio. The 'crack' between the house massing and the dance studio is metal grating and open to the lobby below. The feet and shadows of dancers moving from the exterior catwalk to the dance studio is visible.. Movement is displayed.

For the design of the Stevie Eller Dance Theatre, Jose Pombo and Donna Barry learned about dance, about movement, about graphically representing dance through notation formally called 'labannotation'. This expression of movement is displayed in various parts of the building including the 'dancing columns'. Jose and Donna immersed themselves in the IDEA of movement. 'The faculty taught us about dance and we taught them about structure; together we created 'dancing columns'. We asked Jory Hancock, the director of dance, to tell us about Serenade, Ballanchine's first ballet written for the students of the American Ballet. He sketched the opening frame of the dance on an 81/2 x 11 piece of paper. We were intrigued and contacted the Dance Notation Bureau and the Ballanchine Foundation in New York City and acquired the labonotation and score for Serenade. We overlaid the 'plans' of the starting positions for each movement of Serenade and created a matrix from which emerged the 'grid' of tilted columns that support the glass encased dance studio on the second floor of the building.'

All projects are the result of the work of many: This project was led, designed and executed by Donna Barry and Jose Pombo while employed by Gould Evans. SUBSTANCE design consortium was conceived so that Donna and Jose can work together to create equally successful projects, other primary players on the project include: Trudi Hummel; Jason Boyer; Kyle Houston; Kari Smith, John Cooper, Brian Avery and Pete Rae. Photography provided courtesy of the University of Arizona.