The Yard @ 25: dancing into the future.

in-schools. Applicants audition by videotape and, in some cases, live performance for a selection panel of seven. The summer of 1996 brought artists to The Yard from Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, and England as well as from all over the U.S. "Some important alliances and friendships have been made here," says Nanon. And she's right. Dancers and choreographers have found each other; companies have been spawned. As Danial Shapiro and Joanie Smith of Shapiro & Smith Dance report, "Of the eight members of our company, four of us met at The Yard. You could say that The Yard is responsible for the creation of this company. The Yard gave us our beginnings and a leg up when we needed it most."

The Yard helps choreographers at the most tenuous stage of their careers, when they have committed themselves to their work but are not vet well known. During the rest of the year, most of them hold down other jobs, and struggle to support their dancing lives; rehearsing is sandwiched between work such as waiting tables. Studio space-when it can be found-eats up their budgets; and performance opportunities are few. At The Yard, however, such problems are solved. Choreographers can focus exclusively on their work--no distractions. Broadway way choreographer Susan Marshall (The Yard, 1982) remembers: "The Yard experience was one of the best I had in my early years. The piece I made there was my first real breakthrough in dance."

During the five-week choreographers-dancers section, four choreographers work with a pool of eight dancers, selected by audition. Living together in The Yard's shingled cottages, they get to know each other well. Meals, prepared communally, continue the spirited exchange of ideas begun in rehearsal. Bluefish from Menemsha, fresh vegetables from the farm across the road, and chicken, charcoal-grilled on the sundeck, are menu favorites. Each morning the dancers take turns giving "company class." They have only to walk across the dewy grass to get to the studio. No subways or snarled traffic.

One of the greatest advantages The Yard offers to choreographers is the guidance of its artistic adviser, Bessie Schonberg, mentor to generations of dance artists. For twelve summers, Bessie, as the dance world lovingly calls her, has made pilgrimages to the Vineyard. Twice during each residency, she meets with choreographers to offer her sharp, critical eye. "I call myself a meddler rather than a mentor," Schonberg says. "I dare to invade a work at a point when no creative person likes to be invaded, within the first three weeks of working. I help them to back away from a piece, to see it, to find a form that is as unconventional as they would like it to be."

Visitors to The Yard are likely to spot Bessie, often wearing a baseball cap over her white hair, huddled in a corner of the theater speaking softly to a nervous, note-taking choreographer. Colin Connor (The Yard, 1996) says, "Bessie sees many levels at once: the broad picture, individual sections, how people are dancing. She is objective enough to take the choreographer's vision into account and to relate her suggestions to it."

Choreographers receive a production stipend for costumes, props, and other necessities. Resident lighting designer and technical director Ernest W. Iannaccone lights the new pieces. Even from one performance to the next, choreographers may rework their dances. These, it's understood, are first drafts, to be taken off-island and crafted further. Most work eventually finds its way to a New York City venue, where printed programs acknowledge, "This work was created and first performed at The Yard."

The company development session offers four-week residencies to two companies. To be eligible, a company must have performed professionally as a group for a minimum of three years. Twelve artists in all can be accommodated. The list of companies that have been in residence includes those of David Dorfman, Shapiro & Smith, Doug Elkins, Hilary Easton, Neta Pulvermacher, Annie-B Parson, David Parker, and Joy Kellman. Through intensive working and living together, a Yard residency helps a company to consolidate, to achieve a sense of common purpose.

Nanon, still active as a choreographer, maintains her own residency, to which she invites six dancers and one guest choreographer. The rest of the year, as artistic director of The Yard, she supervises auditions, interviews applicants, and keeps watch over all Yard activities. Particularly playground without walls . . . a place to explore, experiment, construct . . . a place to come together and to be alone." Today, The Yard has full-time staff and a permanent home--three houses and a 100-seat theater--in Chilmark, a romantic part of the Vineyard that, with its hills, mists, meadows, and stone walls, suggests Ireland more than it does Massachusetts. Programming runs from April through October. More than 500 artists--dancers, choreographers, composers, and even playwrights, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner--have enjoyed residencies at The Yard.

The rare beauty of the island inspires creative reverie. Rabbits and speckled guinea fowl populate the shady grounds. Between rehearsals, dancers can escape to the beach or to the nearby fishing village of Menemsha, where sunset viewing is an island tradition. At night, all is quiet--no sirens, no throngs in the street. Only the soft clanging of a buoy and the rustle of fogbound oak trees. Art Bridgman, a Yard veteran, remembers: "There were times just before a performance . . . when I would go outside. It would be a clear, beautiful summer night, with the stars popping out of the sky. I could hear the crickets and the animals in the brush. I brought those experiences onstage with me. That's still what I try to do."

The Yard now offers residencies in three categories: choreographer-dancer, company development, and artist close to her heart is-in-schools program that she started nine years ago. Twice a year for four weeks, a different choreographic-teacher visits six Vineyard schools, initiating children, many of whom have seen dance only on TV, into the pleasure and art of movement. This program is provided free to the schools. Geraldine Moriarty, principal of the Menemsha School, describes the 1996 visit of Wendy Taucher: "She taught our children how to dance, how to perform, and how to work together--a major challenge, with fifty-eight children in one performance!"

Every April, the multicultural workshop introduces island children tn the culture and dance of other countries. among them India, Japan, Haiti, and Bali. Most recently, Andrea DelConte taught the sinuous hand movements and staccato footwork of flamenco. The children, clicking their castanets and accompanied by guitarist Arturo Martinez, flocked like excited, noisy birds around DelConte.

The Yard enriches Vineyard life in other ways, too, offering community classes, free performances for children and senior citizens, and site-specific works created for island locales--a beach, a vineyard, a velvety green meadow. Initially reluctant to leave their comfortable homes and venture into the unfamiliar terrain of cutting-edge modern dance, many islanders now turn up for open rehearsals, pre-performance picnics, benefit events, and the invariably SRO performances. One of the most faithful attendees is actress Patricia Neal, who says, "The Yard provides a cultural service to the Island. I adore the works presented by these gifted performers, and I intend to support them every year."

DiAnn Ray, The Yard's executive director, and herself a longtime island resident, works hard to build community support. With her wide smile and infectious enthusiasm for The Yard, she has recruited volunteers who help with mailings, performances, and fund-raising activities. To Ray this twenty-fifth anniversary marks a crucial year: "The Yard has been the dance world's best-kept secret. It's a small facility, tucked away in a quiet part of the island, but it has had a lasting effect on the lives of many contemporary dance artists. Without changing the nature of The Yard, now is the time to make our presence more widely known." Toward that end, The Yard's board of trustees recently launched a major fund-raising campaign, the "$100,000 Yard Sale: Dancing into the Future."

The effort, which will include a gala benefit performance at St. Mark's Danspace in New York City on March 19, seeks to preserve the public foundation status of The Yard, thus ensuring the perpetuity of the organization. The Yard receives funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Harkness Foundation, Capezio Ballet Makers, the Chilmark Cultural Council, and the Newman Assistance Fund, among others, as well as from many individual contributors. But each year still ends with a financial cliff-hanger. As many other arts organizations must these days, The Yard struggles to continue its mission.

The board of trustees, in its makeup, reflects the dual allegiance of The Yard. Both the New York City dance world and the Vineyard community are represented, with New York City trustees visiting the island in the summer and islanders coming to the city in the winter. Not long ago, at a fund-raising workshop, the board was asked to draw up a wish list for The Yard's future. Year-round programming so that more artists might be served ranked high, as did, increasing Yard visibility in New York City and Boston and building an endowment.

While the job of keeping The Yard alive has grown increasingly complex and expensive, the choreographer's experience there remains essential. David Dorfman, after spending three summers as a dancer and two as a choreographer at The Yard, agrees: "I think of The Yard as my artistic nurturing ground. The design of the residency is perfect for the full use of an artist's creative talents."

And choreographer Cyndi Lee says, "I learned from The Yard how to work deeply and consistently on a daily basis, and now I love that part of my daily regime more than anything else that I do. It's simply what I do. The Yard gave me a deep and renewed sense of myself as an artist."

On the wooden steps of the theater, a jumble of sneakers, sandals, and leg warmers wait to be reclaimed. Inside, music and voices ring out. A dancer on a bicycle appears with a fistful of wildflowers. In the shop, Ernie is making a giant moon for someone's dance. Beyond the top of the hill, the blue sea glitters. Another day at The Yard.

Linda Tarnay teaches at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; she has choreographed for The Yard.