The Joyce Theater

Before it hosted world class dance companies, this building served a much more utilitarian purpose as a silent movie house. Known originally as the Elgin Theater, the venue opened in nineteen forty one and showed B movies and exploitation films for decades. Its transformation began when Eli Taylor and Cora Cahan purchased the dilapidated property in the late nineteen seventies to save it from demolition. They saw the potential to convert the narrow, high-ceilinged space into a permanent home for contemporary dance, a genre that frequently struggled to find stable venues in New York City.