Help Save The First School for Modern Dance - Denishawn House!

Abba Leffler '09 is leading a community organizing effort to save a building in the Bronx that was a birthplace of modern dance. Join Abba, Virginia Byron '10 and other alums and current students by signing a petition to stop demolition and secure historic designation. 

Denishawn House is a mansion built by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in the mid-1920s as the NY home of the Denishawn company, which they used as a school and company studios/performance space for about 8 years (after which Ted Shawn founded Jacob's Pillow). The Denishawn House has been referred to as the first school for modern dance in the country.

More info here: https://archives.nypl.org/dan/185515 ; https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/denishawn-house/

It is slated to be sold to developers and demolished, and we're trying to get historic designation to save it with the hopes of eventually rehabilitating it as a community arts center or something else useful, in a part of the city where much of the cultural legacy has already been razed

Do you have any ideas of how to activate the dance world around this? Any names come to mind when thinking of who might be interested/who we should be reaching out to? We are gathering signatures on a petition and also hoping to have some key people write letters. 

Petition link here: https://www.change.org/p/save-denishawn-house