Velocity Dance Center, the first Stranger Genius Award winner in the
organization category, will be homeless this July. Velocity has been
priced out of its home in Odd Fellows Hall by developer Ted Schroth,
who bought the Hall in January. He wants, according to Velocity
director Kara O’Toole, to triple the rent. At that price, the
Velocity’s cavernous theater—with its high ceiling, polished wood
floors, and 11 friezes of yawning lions lining the
balcony—will never see another performance.
Velocity has tried to find two other locations, but potential deals
at Washington Hall (a beautiful old big brick building, now owned by a
fraternal organization called the Sons of Haiti) and a commercial
building on Dexter fell through. There are rumors that Velocity might
move into the main room at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, another
cavernous room with a high ceiling and wood floors (but no yawning
lions). CHAC seems to be experiencing some real-estate
weirdness. Matthew Kwatinetz, executive director of CHAC, says he
is trying to buy the building from current owner Elizabeth Linke. Linke
(an articulate Irish lady who currently resides in Ballard) says
Kwatinetz did not renew his lease this January. “As far as I know,
Matthew will be moving out June 30,” Linke said. “I’m not
interested in selling the building, period.” The director of Velocity
says only that, after the first two disappointments, she’s trying not
to get her hopes up.
Last Sunday night, Velocity had its last dance (aside from a
few final rentals): three pieces as part of SCUBA, an intercity dance
exchange program. The final piece, by José Navarrete from San
Francisco, was a didactic solo dance about immigration and disease
(specifically huitlacoche, a black fungus that grows on
corn) as metaphor. The middle piece, by longtime Seattle
choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott, was a reprise of Geography,
performed at On the Boards last November. Geography whispered
like a ghost; The Revenge of Huitlacoche blared like a bullhorn.
Neither suited the occasion.
But two excerpts from HOUSE, by Philadelphia’s Kate
Watson-Wallace, were sweet and sad, and addressed the ache in the
air. The dance began in a small office upstairs from Velocity,
recently vacated by an education nonprofit called Reel Grrls. Six
dancers sat around a table, listening to a solemn, minor-key waltz for
piano and guitar. They shifted positions (slouching, holding their
heads in their hands) like they were waiting for something to
end. Their gestures became more stylized and synchronized as the
waltz intensified—leaning into and lifting each other, balancing
on the tabletop and walking up the walls. The men picked up the
women still sitting in their chairs, held them aloft, and turned them
sideways. The waltz grew furious as the women sat, feet on the wall and
hair pointing at the floor, staring balefully out at a room that
used to be something. 
