"They were all right here," Cathy Weis told Fjord Review about the building on Broadway between Prince and Spring. "You'd just go down the hall and see what what's-her-name was working on."
She meant the postmodern dancers who lived and made work in the Broadway lofts in the 1970s: Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, David Gordon, Simone Forti, Douglas Dunn and others. Most of that scene now survives in archives and old photographs. Two of its third-floor lofts are still running a public calendar. Douglas Dunn Studio is at 541 Broadway, and Weis's loft, WeisAcres, is at 537 Broadway #3. From Friday, November 13, through Sunday, November 22, one of them has a performance every night except Monday the 16th.
Admission is $25 at most, and the stage is three flights above the shops.
Who lived on these floors
The history explains the floor plan. In his own account for the SoHo Memory Project, Dunn wrote that Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs and David Gordon had all moved into 541 Broadway in the early '70s, on the fifth, fourth and second floors. When Childs was on tour, Dunn sometimes rented her studio because it was wider than his own loft at 508 Broadway. That loft was twenty-two feet across. Childs's was thirty-five. He and his dancers performed Lazy Madge there for two weeks in the late '70s. In 1982 he bought the third floor.
His official biography lists him as a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1969 to 1973 and a founding member of the improvisational group Grand Union from 1970 to 1976.
Weis came later. Fjord Review reports that she bought her loft in 2005 from Simone Forti, who wanted it to stay in the dance community. The same piece says Dunn still lives "across the wall" in Weis's building. Fjord calls her loft one of the last artist-occupied apartments in the neighborhood and her series one of only a handful of its kind still running in New York.
"The '70s was an absolutely unique cultural situation," Dunn told Fjord Review.
What survives of that situation is two studios behind one wall, with schedules that overlap for ten days.
Ten nights on one block of Broadway
| Date | Venue | Program | Time | Admission |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fri, Nov 13 | Douglas Dunn Studio, 541 Broadway | Hesperides | 8 p.m. | $25 chair, $20 floor cushion |
| Sat, Nov 14 | Douglas Dunn Studio | Hesperides | 8 p.m. | $25 / $20 |
| Sun, Nov 15 | WeisAcres, 537 Broadway #3 | Sundays on Broadway: Ellen Fisher, Eddy Levin & Hana van der Kolk, Cathy Weis & Lisa Kraus | 6 p.m., doors 5:45 | $5–20 suggested |
| Mon, Nov 16 | Dark | |||
| Tue, Nov 17 to Sat, Nov 21 | Douglas Dunn Studio | Hesperides, five nights in a row | 8 p.m. | $25 / $20 |
| Sun, Nov 22 | WeisAcres | Sundays on Broadway: Jennifer Miller, Annabel Sexton-Daldry, YiYi | 6 p.m., doors 5:45 | $5–20 suggested |
Hesperides, seven nights at 541
Douglas Dunn + Dancers are presenting Hesperides with choreography by Dunn, costumes and painted set surfaces by Mimi Gross, lighting and scenery by Lauren Parrish, and video window and sound design by Jacob Burckhardt. Dunn also chose the music and text.
This is the third time the work has been shown. The company's program notes list a preview at FiveMyles on May 11, 2025, and a studio run from April 25 to May 2, 2026. After that spring run, Mindy Aloff wrote in Fjord Review that she saw it as a companion to Dunn's Garden Party and that it had been "in process for the past forty-two years." In the spring run, one of the solos was one Dunn made in 1984, two years after he bought the third floor.
The SoHo Broadway Initiative listing gives the house rules.
- Seating is limited.
- Doors open 30 minutes before the 8 p.m. curtain.
- There is no late seating, and seats must be claimed at least 10 minutes before curtain.
- The piece runs about an hour.
- The building has an elevator.
The two ticket prices come from the room itself. A chair costs $25 and a cushion on the floor costs $20, fees included. With a one-hour running time, the show lets out around 9 p.m., early enough for a late dinner on Prince Street. Tickets and updates are on the company's upcoming page.
The last two Sundays at 537 Broadway #3
Weis's loft has been hosting performances for more than twenty years. According to WeisAcres, she started an invited-audience Salon Series there in 2003, ran it for ten years, and opened it up as Sundays on Broadway in spring 2014. The series describes itself as one-night-only evenings where established and emerging downtown artists try out material and talk about how they work.
This fall Weis is curating with David Guzman and Zo Williams. The season has four Sundays, starting October 25, and November 15 and 22 are the last two. Doors open at 5:45 p.m. and the program starts at 6. The suggested donation is $5 to $20, and all of it goes to the performers.
November 15. Ellen Fisher presents Reckon so, a solo work in progress. Eddy Levin and Hana van der Kolk perform together, and Weis and Lisa Kraus present a collaboration built around a 1978 video of Steve Paxton. In practice, this Sunday brings the 1970s footage into the same building where that era's work was made. The full lineup is on the November 15 page.
November 22. Jennifer Miller presents a new dance, Fignessing. Annabel Sexton-Daldry shows a piece about friendship and her experience in the youth climate movement, and the Ukrainian folk group YiYi performs: Caroline Kuhn, Katie Pawluk and Zoya Shepko. Details are on the November 22 page.
Because the Sunday show starts at 6, it ends in time for dinner. On November 15, you can see the Weis evening and then come back to the same building Tuesday through Saturday for Dunn's run.
Where to eat before an 8 p.m. curtain or after a 6 p.m. Sunday
Several places that opened in western and central SoHo this fall are short walks from 537 and 541 Broadway. Opening dates and details below come from Eater NY's September and October openings roundups, and from Patch for Sandwell.
- Romy, 199 Prince Street between MacDougal and Sullivan. It opened September 22 with chef Lucrezia Stella running the kitchen.
- Sandwell, 157 Prince Street. This is founder Andy Gottlieb's third Manhattan sandwich shop.
- La Salumeria Soho, 195 Spring Street at Sullivan. Chef Salvo Lo Castro of Casasalvo next door opened this Italian sandwich shop on September 25.
- Good Company, 343 West Broadway between Broome and Grand. It opened October 8 from the team behind Yesterday's, with chef Robert Sieber in the kitchen.
- Bar Leone, 527 Broome Street at Watts. Restaurateur Andres Diaz opened this two-floor cocktail lounge on September 10, a good stop after a show.
- Rye by Martin Auer, 285 Lafayette Street at Jersey. Austrian baker Martin Auer opened it on September 10, east of Broadway.
For Dunn's run, Prince Street is the simplest choice: Romy and Sandwell are a few blocks west of Broadway, and you can be back upstairs at 541 by 7:30 when doors open. On a Sunday, the 6 p.m. start leaves the whole evening for Good Company or Bar Leone on the western edge of the neighborhood.
At street level, this stretch of Broadway is full of new storefronts. The SoHo Broadway Initiative's October roundup lists September openings that include Magda Butrym's first New York store at 170 Mercer and Victoria Beckham at 150 Mercer. The third floor at 537–541 Broadway is still used the way it was in the 1970s: a studio with cushions on the floor and a performance on most nights through November 22.
At Heather Cooper, we spend a lot of time inside SoHo lofts, and floors like these, with real history, come up more often than you might expect. If you live nearby and want to know how your building fits into the neighborhood's loft history and today's market, schedule a complimentary market consultation and we'll go through it with you.
