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Photo Courtesy of The School of Arts and Architecture

Vibrant Kaufman Hall takes center stage

By Cynthia Lee
Today Staff Writer

It was a richly detailed, historic Italian Romanesque building on the outside, but clearly dilapidated on the inside. Originally associated with sweat, sports and physical education classes, the dark, dank interior of the Women’s Gymnasium possessed all the charm of a locker room.

Giving it a new name in 1984 — the Dance Building — didn’t change its basic personality. “They roofed over the shuffleboard court and made a dance studio,” said David Gere, acting chair of the World Arts and Cultures (WAC) Department that took over the building. The cavernous basketball court, its backboard still intact, became WAC’s primary performance space. Sound and lighting equipment was placed on a tower of stacked lunch tables. Buckets were kept handy because the old roof leaked.

“Students were dancing in sweaty, dark places with no ventilation,” recalled Christopher Waterman, former chair of WAC and now dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture. When the Northridge earthquake damaged the structure, UC allotted money for seismic repair and life safety upgrades. “We thought we’d be lucky if they spackled over the cracks in the walls,” Gere said. “Nobody thought anything exciting was going to happen to this space.”

But something did. In 1999, Glorya Kaufman, who already had a 20-year history of giving to UCLA, stepped in with a vision and an $18-million gift, the largest single donation to the dance art form in America and, at that time, the largest gift to UCLA outside of the health sciences.

With her gift and UC funds in place, the firm in charge of the $35-million renovation, Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners of Santa Monica, began meeting with the donor, faculty, staff and students to create a plan that would allow this dynamic, experimental and diverse department the freedom to thrive in a historic building that had design restrictions.

Photo Courtesy of The School of Arts and Architecture

The Kaufman Family Garden Theater will host free noontime dance performances, beginning Nov. 1.

What this team of collaborators has created is an elegant jewel box of a building, rich with sunlit dance studios, multimedia classrooms, a lab for art-making, an outdoor dance pavilion with a canopy roof that seems to float above it and a state-of-the-art dance theater equipped with the best lighting and acoustical technology around.

Last week, WAC officially opened Glorya Kaufman Hall to the public with all the energy and panache the department is renowned for. During an open house Oct. 22, faculty and students kept three stages constantly filled with movement, from hip-hop to traditional Javanese court dances.

For the campus, the renovation opens the world of WAC to the outside. Those walking down Sycamore Alley or between the Anderson School and Kaufman Hall can easily spy dancers in class or rehearsal. There will be lunchtime concerts in the pavilion where employees and visitors can stretch out on the grass and brown-bag it.

But the most dramatic changes are inside, starting with a walk-through lobby that connects the existing south and new north entrances. On one side is the Rainbow Lounge, named by Kaufman, where students can hang out. “There was no place in the old building for students to meet. There was no heart in the building,” Waterman said.

Now, not only is there heart, but lots of light, both natural and manmade, that washes over expansive white walls and blonde wood accents. Gold-sheathed columns seem to rise dramatically into pools of light created by a false ceiling. At the new north entrance, architects designed a two-story atrium where an illuminated bridge is suspended overhead, an invitation to walk out to the building’s historic loggia overlooking the pavilion.

“This is an astonishing transformation,” said Waterman as he stood in what once was a basketball court. To design the Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater, the architectural firm partnered with Theatre Projects Consultants, which also worked on Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Kodak Theatre.

Many thought the theater should simply be a featureless “black box,” Gere recalled. “But Peter Sellars (WAC professor and an internationally known stage designer) said there were enough black boxes around. How about thinking about a Shinto shrine?” The concept of a theater that merged the serene beauty of a Shinto shrine with the technical prowess of a Hollywood sound stage resonated.

The “infinitely reconfigurable space,” said architect Buzz Yudell, is huge, surrounded on three sides by two levels of balconies. On the ground level, sections of tiered seats on trolleys can telescope back if performances call for it. The hall can seat up to 400. Spanning the ceiling are rows of perforated metal arches that neatly house a tangle of cables, wires and equipment that provide air handling, lighting and sound.

Will its new home change WAC? Dancers once performed in hallways, restrooms and other unconventional spaces in the old Dance Building. With eyes twinkling, Gere warned, “Expect to see us performing on the rooftops, in the hallways and the bathrooms. ... We’re going to keep right on doing the wild stuff.”