Smuin Contemporary Ballet dancers don’t normally use white respirator masks, but they have been vagabonds for 25 years and they weren’t going to wait another day. They were willing to breathe in paint fumes and dust to finally rehearse in their long-awaited and still-unfinished $10 million studio at the base of Potrero Hill.

The San Francisco company founded by the late choreographer Michael Smuin in 1994 had never managed to secure a studio lease, but now it owns a space in the city. So this first day of rehearsal for its annual “The Christmas Ballet” was historic because it marked the first day the 16-dancer troupe could rehearse at the official Smuin Center for Dance.

Gone is the hassle and the wear and tear of subletting space, which meant dancers were kicked out for children’s classes. Gone are the days they’d have to pack up their gear, traipse across town and find parking at some other borrowed space, with a different sprung floor to adapt to. Shin splints and knee troubles are an occupational hazard in constantly changing surfaces. So is transportation. Most dancers supplement their income by teaching. Without a studio they are like adjunct professors, known as “freeway fliers,” shuttling between dance schools.

But now Smuin can offer its own schedule of classes with its own dancers as instructors.

“To be able to have a home that is ours opens up so much potential for what the company can do for the city as far as outreach, teaching and bringing up the next generation with a deep love of Smuin,” says Tessa Barbour, 26, who is so giddy that you’d think her respirator mask is connected to laughing gas.

And Barbour has only been with the company for four years. Terez Dean Orr, 31, is a 12-year veteran and grew weary from the wandering.

“City Ballet, the Academy of Ballet, ODC, Lines, Margaret Jenkins,” she says, counting them off. She’s on her second set of five fingers when she loses steam trying to remember the others. But she’s made her point. “There’s a joy in knowing that we have made it as a nonprofit organization in one of the most expensive cities.”

There is also joy for her in knowing the deal was made by her husband, John Speed Orr, a retired Smuin dancer turned commercial real estate agent with Vanguard Properties.

Smuin had been looking for property for years and was always outbid. Then Speed Orr became the company’s agent in 2015, as soon as he got his license. “I was uniquely able to do this job,” says Speed Orr, 31, who grew up in Fairfax. “I’ve spent my entire life in ballet studios. I can walk into a space and see myself jumping and qualify it immediately.”

This happened the minute Speed Orr walked into the Metronome Ballroom. It had just been listed, so Smuin acted fast, bidding nearly $1 million over asking price to win a four-way bidding war. Two Smuin board members provided a bridge loan so the company could pay the $4.7 million in cash.

Built in 1949 as an oddly shaped warehouse to fit a freight line, the building had to be gutted. A $10 million capital campaign is ongoing to retrofit and build out the space, and to launch outreach programs.

The studio houses two levels. On the ground floor are two large rehearsal rooms with sprung floors, locker rooms with showers, treatment areas and a dark room for watching dance videos. Upstairs is office space for the company’s 10-member staff and a kitchen.

The people who run the company have never before shared space with the people who dance for the company. Now Artistic Director Celia Fushille has an office fitted with observation glass so she can look down on the two studios. It is the same setup Steve Kerr has overlooking the Golden State Warriors’ practice court underneath Chase Center.

“As soon as I look down, all the dancers stop and wave,” she says.

The Smuin Center is not a performance venue. Smuin is a road company that travels light. It carries its own portable sprung floor, but not much in the way of sets or live accompaniment. Its contemporary dance programs are set to recorded pop and classical music and staged at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as in Walnut Creek, Carmel and Mountain View. The audience for its performances totals about 25,000 per season. There may soon be more because the studio frontage on 17th Street has blinds that can be opened to the sun and to new audience members on the sidewalk and the passing 22-Fillmore.

That first day was celebrated with a wine reception for donors and board members. After dancing a solo to Linda Ronstadt‘s “La Calandria,” Barbour swapped out her black sombrero and red serape for street clothes to serve drinks. Then donors sat in a square of chairs in one of the studios. They were happy to breathe the paint fumes and dust just like the performers.

“It makes me cry,” says Patti Hume, the company’s first board president. “It’s a dream come true.”

“The Christmas Ballet”: Nov. 22-23. Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; Nov. 29-Dec. 1. Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View; Dec. 12-23. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., S.F.; Dec. 28-29. Sunset Center, San Carlos Street and Ninth Avenue, Carmel-by-the-Sea. $25-$97. smuinballet.org