Strathmore: Does dance in D.C. need it?

WALK INTO THE Music Center at Strathmore's DM new concert hall at ground level and look up. Or come in five stories above and look down. Either view will take your breath away. You have entered a vast sculpture that seats 2000. Its inside contours are violin-shaped. The concert platform is sprung wood, ideal for dance. Su are the floors in the surrounding studios. This is a place for musicians, but it seems to accommodate dancers.

"It was built with both in mind," says president and chief executive officer (and former choreographer) Eliot Pfanstiehl. "It is paradise," adds Paul Gordon Emerson, whose CityDance Ensemble just became suburban, having left shared quarters in Washington, D.C. to take up residence in North Bethesda, Maryland, as Strathmore's in-house company and school for the movement arts. Despite the bucolic look of the reglan, Strathmore has a lifeline to the city; it is the only one of the Washington area's major performing arts centers on a metro stop.

The new building that contains the concert hall, studios (a big one also serves as a black-box theater), offices, and lounges is bright, scalloped, two-winged, and stands on a steep slope beneath an old-mansion, Strathmore Hall, For years it has served Maryland's Montgomery County as a modest arts house. Since opening the addition in February, Strathmore has drawn its public from the entire capital area and its performers from all over the world. One of the new building's wings is for performance, the other for education in the performing arts. CityDance, the Levine School of Music, and other resident groups are expected to teach their art at all levels. Visiting groups can participate by admitting students to rehearsals. The concept seems ideal.

But does Washington really need another performing arts complex? Pfanstiehl says the Baltimore Symphony felt that a second home was vital to its survival. For dance, the concert platform has wings. Although there is no proscenium, slides and videos can be projected.

Shouldn't the $98.6 million building costs have been used instead to subsidize needy arts groups, though? The funds were one-time monies from 1999 government surpluses; performing groups demand continued support. Pfanstiehl also believes that Strathmore will become a catalyst for collaboration; certainly CityDance has live music available as never before.

Strathmore isn't the end of Washington's building boom for the performing arts. The Harman Center, an outgrowth of Michael Khan's Shakespeare Theatre, is already underway downtown and is slated for a 2007 opening.