CONCORD ACADEMY OPENS NEW DANCE FACILITY.

CONCORD, Massachusetts--Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy will inaugurate an impressive new facility during its third season, July 12 to 30. The program is under the direction of the head of performing arts, Amy Spencer, and her husband, Richard Colton, who also teaches at the venerable prep school and codirects their company, Spencer/Colton Dance. The summer dance project will open the new Student Health and Athletic Center, designed by Graham Gund. Gund also designed the five-story home of the Boston Ballet in the city's South End.

"We were familiar with the Boston Ballet building," says Spencer. "It has some of the same feel: a large atrium with plenty of room for people to stretch out and a staircase that connects the three floors."

The new building will house an air-conditioned, 2,500-square-foot, state-of-the-art dance performance space. "The studio, which gets a lot of light, will have open beams to serve as a light grid and a beautiful L'Aire sprung floor," Spencer says. "It's the same floor we toured with for White Oak [Dance Project]." Spencer and Colton, who danced with the Joffrey Ballet, were members of Twyla Tharp's company and later toured with White Oak. Colton joined American Ballet Theatre before the pair moved to Massachusetts to direct the dance program at Concord Academy.

The summer project hopes to attract twenty to twenty-five preprofessionals seeking an intensive program. In addition to the new studio, classes will be scheduled in the old-fashioned barn theater in Concord, 51 Walden, that is home to the Concord Orchestra and the Concord Players during the year.

The 1999 summer faculty includes Arthur Aviles, Heidi Latsky, Dan Joyce, Sandra Stone, Randall Jaynes, and writer and critic Marcia B. Siegel. A choreographers' project, open to experienced dancemakers by permission of the directors, will culminate in a showing at the Summer Stages Workshop Presentation.