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Wave of movement: with new facilities and a growing audience, San Diego's dance artists are bustin' out.

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A summer breeze from San Diego Bay wafts through nearly floor-to-ceiling windows into John Malashock's studio, where he leads students in traveling phrases across the 60-foot-long room. In another airy studio down the hall, a class rehearses a piece to Motown tunes under the eye of guest teacher Monica Bill Barnes.

That was the scene one morning last July at a summer intensive at Dance Place San Diego. Located at a former naval training center reborn as an arts and education complex, Dance Place has 11 studios, office space, locker rooms with showers, and a lounge. The 23,000-square-foot Spanish colonial building opened in December 2006 with three resident companies: Malashock Dance, Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater, and San Diego Ballet. Malashock and Isaacs are modern choreographers, with Malashock known for dense, often literary pieces, and Isaacs for work that ranges from slouchy humor to Zen metaphysics. San Diego Ballet reflects the witty, musical theater-influenced aesthetic of artistic director Javier Velasco. The three groups had joined forces during a decade of lobbying for the facility. Dance Place has since added Butterworth Dance Company, and it rents space to several dozen groups as well.

Dance Place is San Diego's first building dedicated to dance. The high-visibility, $4.8 million project comes at a time when dance in San Diego is showing plenty of muscle. There's a groundswell of contemporary choreographers, growing ballet repertories, and an abundance of world dance. And musical theater, hip hop, and ballroom scenes have national clout.

Audiences, as well as the art, have expanded. "I used to know my whole audience," says Isaacs, who formed her first San...

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