So many New York stories turn on space. That's why New Yorkers scrap so hard for every square foot that they can buy, rent, or occupy. With enough of it, almost anything is possible in that city. I know because, for over six years now, I've been watching Anya Sapozhnikova prove it. The 26-year-old circus impresario, aerial acrobat, and stage producer attracts crowds that line up and pay to see her dangling upside down, 30-feet-in-the-air, hanging onto a strand of silk. But what happens now that doubling rents are forcing her from her high-ceilinged base of 5 years?



Everything turns on the dimensions of whatever she rents next.



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I wouldn't have met Anya in the spring of 2007 if not for event promoter Will Etundi's proclivity for finding party spaces with very high ceilings. We were on opposite sides of a crowded warehouse, hundreds of drunk people between us, but no one could miss Anya: on stilts, she was 13 feet tall.

Back then she lived in a sprawling Bed-Stuy basement with a very low ceiling and a thick pipe running down its center. Her building, 1054 Bergen Street, was about a 15 minute walk from the Marcy projects, where Jay-Z grew up. The basement door was silver, bore a rainbow, and said "boring" at the top. She'd reclaimed the space behind it, along with her friend, roommate, and eventual business partner, Kae Burke, cleaning out all manner of squalor. The unpleasant work left them with enough affordable square feet to host what they called MakeFun parties. Think cheap alcohol and crafts. Yards of fabric, sewing machines, paint, wood, and tools were on hand. If you were a scrappy entertainer in Brooklyn's underground scene, you could come get supplies needed for a costume or prop, along with a community well-versed in the ups-and-downs of affixing sequins onto anything. Since most attendees lived in closet-sized apartments, a workroom itself was a valuable thing, and everyone was playful even when sober. Most 19-year-olds would've lived there for years. Yet weeks after I visited that Bed-Stuy basement for the first time, Anya was thinking bigger.

