L.A. report: the language of curves.

IT'S A SAFE BET you won't have Los Angeles to kick around any more. With Walt Disney Concert Hall a downtown magnet for tourists and music-lovers alike--and dance fans flocking across the street to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion's presentations--the city's West Side is now poised to gain a major foothold, puns intended, in the art form. In a gala weekend this winter on its Westwood campus. UCLA unveils its $35 million dance facility, now renamed Glorya Kaufman Hall.

Known as the Women's Gymnasium when it was constructed in 1932, the Italian Romanesque edifice became the Dance Building in 1962 under the directorship of Alma Hawkins. After the building sustained damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, philanthropist Kaufman donated $18 million in 1999 to help transform it into an educational facility that would also include state-of-the-art performance venues.

Renovation and restoration began two years later. The reconstructed building, with its two indoor theaters, numerous rehearsal studios, multimedia labs, offices, classrooms, and an outdoor pavilion theater, is a stunner. David Rousseve, chair of the Department of World Arts and Cultures, is thrilled.

"I foresee creating a cauldron of creative and scholarly energy around this new building," he says. "Each of the three performance spaces has a different feel, and I want to triple the amount of events this department offers. We also hope to work with the presenting series here, UCLA Live, to produce programming, as well as to use this space as a way to support the local dance community."

The Santa Monica-based firm, Moore Ruble Yudell, executed the renovation of the 80,000-square-foot building. Gutting the interior while maintaining the integrity of the structure--its three-story gabled roof and rose and arch windows take advantage of Southern California's seemingly endless sunlight--was paramount.

"Ms. Kaufman doesn't like straight lines," explained project architect Erin Hillhouse, "so wherever possible, we used the language of curves, which is appropriate for a dance building."

A feeling of movement predominates, from the bowed sliding doors that open onto the first-floor student lounge, to the 3,600-square-foot outdoor pavilion that serves as a combination theater stage, experimental performance space, and garden. The entire building is wired with high-tech audio, video, and communication systems. But the jewel in the crown is the second floor's reconfigurable performance space. Accented in rich maple, the area, which noted theater director and UCLA faculty member Peter Sellars dubs, "soundstage meets Shinto shrine," seats 350.

Rousseve, who is also a dancer-choreographer of note, says an adjacent, 100-seat performance-area-cum-cafe will also be the site of weekly works-in-progress. But programming works other than student-faculty fare poses an immediate challenge. Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture, says that no endowment currently exists for such fare, and that it might take a year to determine how community needs could be integrated with UCLA's use of the building.

One possibility, says UCLA choreography and performance professor Victoria Marks, is to offer the seven rehearsal studios as space grants. "Fourteen choreographers could be given daily access for a three-week period. We could also be stimulating and supporting the creation of work, which is one of the most challenging things as an artist in Los Angeles."