The Academy opened for business at the Bishop Quarter building on Lake Street in January 1983 – it had taken an army of volunteers to sand floors, paint walls, run new electric and scrub everything clean, but in three weeks the old Bishop Quarter Military Academy had been transformed into a wonderful space for dance. The building dates from 1929 and is a landmarked work by Gerald Barry; it was built as an addition to the original older Victorian building that had been the first Oak Park River Forest High School, and then was run as a boys’ Catholic boarding school by the Dominican nuns and named for a prominent bishop. In the early 1970’s the older building was torn down, and newer townhomes began to surround the classroom and gymnasium building standing in their midst. The Villages Parks and Recreation had offices in the building for a time as did a gymnastic school and an artists’ coop. When the Academy bought the building from the Village of Oak Park, there were trees growing on the roof and in the gymnasium. Shortly after renovations allowed Academy classes to start, Stephanie Clemens, Larry Ippel and James Tenuta founded MOMENTA in 1983 – as the Academy’s resident dance company. The big gymnasium slowly grew into a wonderful space for dance classes, a flourishing preschool based in the arts, and with the capability to convert to a black box theater for dance and music performances.