If the winter is rough, some of the plants in your yard may not survive to the next season. The tulips may disappear altogether. But others will reemerge, stronger and more vigorous than ever. A Shasta daisy you put in the ground as a tiny seedling five years ago might now be a lush clump of riotous blooms. This is the way things go in a yard.

It’s also the way things go at The Yard, the nonprofit dance organization in Chilmark that has been nurturing contemporary dancers and choreographers since 1973. Supporting artists early in their careers, providing them with residencies and performance opportunities, The Yard seeds the field of dance. It’s not easy to survive in the competitive arena of the contemporary arts, and some of The Yard’s artists don’t make it. Others grow and prosper, and The Yard’s programs help them to do so. Past Yard dancers have gone on to work with major choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris, and Paul Taylor, performing throughout the world. Many Yard artists are now choreographers with their own companies, and some are also teachers, working at The Juilliard School, New York University, Princeton University, and other conservatories and universities.

David Dorfman, a choreographer, dancer, and professor at Connecticut College, first came to The Yard in 1981 to dance in pieces by two choreographers, including Yard founder Patricia N. Nanon. He was fresh out of school, and this was his first performance gig. It went well, and he returned the following year to participate in a second Yard residency, during which he was paired with budding choreographer Susan Marshall for six weeks of intensive work, culminating in performances on the Vineyard and in New York. Now, David and Susan both have their own small but highly regarded dance companies, performing regularly in New York and other cities.

“David’s own choreography was taking off [when we worked together at The Yard],” remembers Susan, “so it was a big influence on my work.”

“Susan has been a big influence on me, too, ever since then,” David concurs. “That’s the kind of thing The Yard does for people. For emerging artists, The Yard is essential. In the first three years of work, it’s easy for artists to crash; but if they come here, they can get the support they need.”

At the time of her residency, Susan recalls, “I had a handful of dancers that I’d never done more than one piece with. I didn’t have my own company yet. This was the beginning of the beginning for me. Almost nobody does what The Yard does. It’s more than a venue; it offers a chance to get to know other artists and work with them. It encourages risk, because although it is very visible, it doesn’t feel so, because it’s on an island. It encourages breakthroughs.”

Recently, The Yard got a new gardener – Wendy Taucher, who became managing director in the fall of 2005 and artistic director in April of this year. While her position as head honcho of The Yard’s staff is relatively new, she’s hardly new to The Yard. A choreographer, author, and arts educator, Wendy first worked with The Yard in 1997, when the organization arranged for her to be an artist-in-residence at the Chilmark School. Two years later, she did a second residency in the Tisbury School. This one took off and resulted in a major performance: Sponsored by the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation and The Yard, it had a cast of thirty-eight (sixteen performers from New York and twenty-two from the Vineyard) and was performed to a Beethoven symphony at Nat’s Farm Meadow on Old County Road before an audience of three hundred people.

Having worked here on the piece for six months, Wendy grew to know the Vineyard in a new and deeper way; she was bitten by the Island bug, and soon, she was coming regularly to the Vineyard and volunteering at The Yard. She became a member of the organization’s board and was its president for two years. During this time, she also worked on producing a series of dances performed to the music of Carly Simon, which were presented at The Yard two seasons ago.

As The Yard’s new leader, Wendy intends to maintain the organization’s primary focus of serving the field of modern dance through its residency programs, but she is also taking steps to enhance its role within the Island community. She is expanding its education programs to all of the Island’s public schools, and she’s making The Yard a more active and visible Island performing arts venue. With gardening, even your oldest, most reliable plants need fertilizer, especially if they are focal points in your garden, and Wendy decided that The Yard’s residencies needed something to freshen them up. So she created “Yard Arts,” a festival of performing arts events including dance, theater, music, and film, intended to complement The Yard’s existing programs. Held for the first time last season, the festival showcased the work of artists from both on- and off-Island and brought new audiences to The Yard. In fact, Wendy estimates that 50 percent of festival audiences – who on several nights filled the one-hundred-seat theater to capacity – were there for the first time.

“It was a kind of cross-fertilization,” she says. New audience members who came to see non-dance performances then came back to see dance; and dance audiences were enriched by the opportunity to see other kinds of work – allowing them to put contemporary dance into the context of other new work in the performing arts.

This summer, the festival is up and running again, taking place over the first three weeks of August. It will begin with an evening of dance solos called “Contemporary and Classic,” which will include recent works paired with several of what Wendy calls “the great old classic solos” by choreographers like Martha Graham and Lucinda Childs.

“It’s a gift to see the great pieces,” says Wendy, “kind of like hearing Beethoven’s Fifth if you’ve never heard his music before. . . . Showing the classics of modern dance is part of the educational process for everyone. If your first exposure to contemporary dance is watching our residency performances, it’s like starting to read by picking up James Joyce. The work created here is great, but it’s also very complex. It’s not generally narrative, and not necessarily driven by music. It’s often very polychromatic – a lot of things are happening at the same time.” By providing people with an opportunity to see the classics of contemporary dance, Wendy hopes to give them a context and a background for the newer work.

Other festival events include a week of performances by the Urban Bush Women Dance Company (a well-known New York City–based dance troupe that has performed on the Island twice before). And Wendy is again adding some “non-traditionals” to the summer’s repertoire: a weekend of theater that includes a one-person monologue and a play produced by Islander Joann Breuer; the screening of a documentary film on choreographer and dancer Lucinda Childs (who now lives on the Vineyard); a celebrity-studded performance of a piece by Spalding Gray, directed by his widow; and an evening of readings by writers affiliated with the Chilmark Writing Workshop.

“We are adding things, but not subtracting from our commitment to give time and space to vibrant choreographers and dancers, because that’s our main mission,” says Wendy. “These other projects are being created to support that mission, in terms of interest, understanding, and funding.”

“We really worked hard last year to get our name out there,” she adds, noting that The Yard published two supplements on the festival in the Gazette, upgraded its Internet presence, produced an information packet, created an electronic newsletter, and issued weekly press releases. “We’retrying to expand the overlap between the Vineyard community and the dance community, with The Yard as the place in the center where they meet.”

“It seems like the new Yard is becoming more a part of the fabric of life on Martha’s Vineyard,” comments David Dorfman. “People here seem to be wanting more art in their summers. This is great, but the soul of the organization is still its mission of nurturing emerging artists. When I was here working with Susan, I remember feeling, ‘Life can’t get any better than this.’”

And so it grows at The Yard. Complementing its contemporary dance programs with exotic and unexpected blends of theater, film, and art, The Yard is dazzling the eye, intriguing the ear, and engaging all of our senses. After all, isn’t that what a beautiful garden is all about?