It’s not the class and it’s not the box of the studio, you know, which is like many other studio boxes. But it’s the hallway where all of these people are and these are my loves and these are my companions and my collaborators. And to see them all in passing or because we just shared sweaty place together is so special.
DNA has been a home for me since I started teaching. They gave me my first break.
The environment now is kind of a mix a friction between sad, nostalgic and also really grateful.
We are what’s going on. There’s no more building for us, but we’re starting to realize, I think, that we weren’t a building. We were a community.
So one of the things that was most devastating to me when I heard that DNA was closing was I felt like I had this basket of artists that I was holding in my arms and I wanted to bring it somewhere. Umm, Luckily Gibney Dance Center has agreed to begin a whole series similar to the series here.
The old adage about the door and the window, it’s true for us in this case.

Dance New Amsterdam (DNA) originally opened its doors as Dance Space in 1984. Just shy of their 30th anniversary, the organization recently filed for bankruptcy and officially closed it’s doors on Oct. 15, 2013. DNA was home to a variety of people, from casual students to professional dancers, and world-renowned teachers, to up-and-coming artists just trying to find their way.
Alexandra Beller, is just one member of this performing arts community. As a former advanced modern dance teacher at DNA, she is not letting its closure break up the dance community that lived there. She also helped organize a series of classes that invited dancers and choreographers from professional companies to come to the studio and teach. Essentially, this is called a master class, when a guest teacher who does not have a regularly scheduled weekly class comes in and teaches one or two classes.
When Beller heard DNA was closing, the first thing she wanted to do was find a place where this series could continue. She called friends and asked around in the greater dance community. Gina Gibney, owner of Gibney Dance Center said she would be willing to start a series similar to the one that DNA began.
In regards to her students, Beller says, “My hope is that people find out about it and you know the community just re-forms itself the way liquid communities do, you know, they find a new vessel and they fill it up.”
One way her students will find her and all of the teacher that taught at DNA is through a website called dancentell.com. The site makes it easy to find out where and when your favorite DNA teacher is teaching a class in New York City. Many of the teachers, just like Beller, have found or are in the process of finding places to teach and their students are finding them, which shows that dancers will always find a way to dance.