West, West Side story. (News).

The far West Side of Manhattan, an enclave of warehouses and garages, has hardly been a nucleus of dance in the past. But within the last two years, circumstances have changed. The most recent event heralding this significant shift was the announcement in December by Mikhail Baryshnikov that he would open the Baryshnikov Center for Dance at 450 West 37th Street. Preceding his decision was the move of the Trisha Brown Dance Company to West 55th Street in September 2001 and, two blocks east, the groundbreaking for the new Alvin Ailey center in October 2002.

Given the exorbitant cost of New York City real estate, the relative affordability of the area has proved to be a major factor. "We were looking at spaces that were four times as expensive in SoHo," said LaRue Allen, executive director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, who considered other locations' in Manhattan and Brooklyn before acquiring the 16,000 square feet of studio and office space between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. Christina Sterner, the managing director of Baryshnikov Productions, said that, in addition to accommodating size and budgetary concerns, the three floors they have bought are full of light and column free.

Although all the new studios are positioned on the outer margin of Manhattan's West Side, their proximity to commercial and nonprofit theaters, such as those on West 55th Street and 42nd Street, as well as to Lincoln Center and its affiliate theaters (like the new theater for jazz at Columbus Circle) is creating a cultural renaissance in that outer area. Remaining close to Fordham University at Lincoln Center was also important to The Ailey School, which cooperates with the university in offering a bachelor of fine arts degree in dance. The Ailey center, named the Joan Weill Center for Dance, will provide the school and company with twelve studios, two of which can be converted to a black-box theater. It is scheduled to open in the fall of 2004.

Sterner hopes that the prestige of the Baryshnikov Center for Dance, to open in the spring of 2004, will spur a cultural "critical mass" in the area south of Times Square by attracting students, galleries, and restaurants. "It was less about who was around us," said Sterner. "We thought, `We will bring the people.'" The center, which plans to fuse the ideas of dancers and choreographers with other artists, will provide young talents with the services of mentors like choreographer William Forsythe, filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, and theater director Peter Sellars. Baryshnikov's center will include four studios and will have access to a 300-seat theater, one of three theaters housed downstairs and owned by the West 37th Group.

While downtown Manhattan will likely always be a locus of dance activity with Dance Theater Workshop, the Merce Cunningham studio, and other performance and rehearsal venues, alternate dance spaces are needed in a city desperately short of rental studios and theaters affordable for dance companies. Hence, the migration to the West Side.

For Trisha Brown, the move was guided not only by finances but by a changing artistic identity as well. "Trisha became more associated with work for the proscenium stage, so a move to this neighborhood seemed like a natural outgrowth of that artistic change," said Allen.

So is the fringe West Side the new mecca of dance in New York? "We were among the first to come here, but we definitely won't be the last," said Allen. "I think this is going to be analogous to what the downtown area was for dance in the '70s."