Splitting the headaches, sharing the rewards.

IF TWO HEADS are better than one, just think what can be achieved by putting three of four together. At least that's what many New York City dance organizations seem to be thinking as they embark on some novel collaborations to help stretch tight budgets and accomplish like-minded goals.

Mary Cochran, for instance, who chairs the dance department at Barnard College of Columbia University, was determined to put her department's resources to better use serving professional choreographers and her students. She and Dance Theater Workshop's artistic director Cathy Edwards devised a unique partnership that allows three DTW choreographers to become adjuncts at Barnard for one semester next fall while each creates a dance on students that will premiere at DTW this year. (They are David Parker, Donna Uchizono, and Ori Flomin.) Another benefit, says Edwards, is that the project puts DTW on the map with these young dancers. "We want them to know what we do and come here to see dance after they graduate," she says.

"We're all looking for where the new audience will come from," says Arlene Shuler, president and CEO of New York City Center, who formulated the 30-company, six-night Fall for Dance Festival. A survey indicates that 30 percent of festival attendees were new to City Center. Other dance venues stood to benefit as well, since City Center presented all festival goers with a New York Dancelink card entitling them to a 10 percent discount at DTW, The Joyce, and 10 other performance spaces.

"If they go to The Joyce, that's good for all of us," says Marion Dienstag, executive director of DTW. Dienstag initiated a collaborative Fall For Chelsea day to follow the City Center event. This Chelsea block party featured discounted dance shows at DTW, the Kitchen, and The Joyce Theater, (plus theater and art gallery events), all in a joint effort to attract more foot traffic to the area. In other moves to better utilize its expanded space, DTW is also co-sponsoring an event with the Field (another artists' service organization) this year and is partnering with Dancenow/NYC to make DTW its festival home base after it outgrew its former home at The Joyce Soho.

ELISE BERNHARDT, who helped curate the Fall for Dance Festival and will curate part of this summer's Downtown NYC River to River Festival (in part produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), says a tough economic situation in the arts is driving the current collaborative trend. She adds, "The most successful collaborations are when everyone respects everyone else's different agendas." She points to the LMCC as an organization that has forged partnerships between artists, foundations, corporations, and local businesses in order to produce, among other things, Evening Stars, the biggest free outdoor dance series in the city.

Last summer, LMCC turned over the job of curating Evening Stars to The Joyce, which, before the decade is out, will inhabit a new theater space nearby in the new World Trade Center site. Nolini Barretto, LMCC's director of performing arts, says they will do the same this year. "It's a good opportunity for The Joyce to begin cultivating a downtown audience," she says, noting that on some nights last summer as many as 3,500 people showed up to the free outdoor performances. She adds, "Partnerships just make sense."

COMMAND PERFORMANCE

Queen Elizabeth II invest Frederick Franklin, 90, with the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at a Buckingham Palace ceremony. Franklin, whose dancing career began in 1931, said: "I told the Queen this was the most wonderful day of my life."