Eight years after the revolution started, modern dance arrives in its £22m home

The idea of men dressed up as swans was what did it. When the corps de ballet of Matthew Bourne's radical version of Swan Lake hit the stage at Sadler's Wells in November 1995, a line of bare-chested male dancers, their thighs clad in layers of white feathers, a pivotal image in the history of dance was presented.

Bourne bought a contemporary dance sensibility to a hallowed staple of the classical repertoire, gave it an extra bit of Broadway-style musical swing and won over audiences and critics alike. His production netted dozens of awards and is still regularly performed around the world.

Almost at a stroke, Bourne took modern dance out of the relatively obscure corners of the arts pages and the fringe venues and made it popular and happening.

And last night, Tessa Jowell the Culture Secretary, and the great and good of the arts world gathered in Deptford Creek, south London, to launch the biggest step forward in British contemporary dance.

Laban, which is said to be the biggest purpose-built space for contemporary dance in the world, is the £22m new home for the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. The company, which has been located in south London since the 1970s and is mainly funded by the National Lottery, was the first in Britain to offer BA and MA dance degrees; it now runs the first MSc in Dance Science. Laban's most famous alumnus, Matthew Bourne, is on its board of directors.

Competition for its 350 degree and post-graduate places is very high; most of its graduates are able to find careers. But the wider public are hooked as well: its evening and weekend classes and workshops for both adults and children were booked up weeks ago.

From Morris to line, via Wigan and Ibiza, salsa classes and dance aerobics, Britain has long been dance-crazy. But the Laban Centre – designed by Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss-based architects behindTate Modern – is the strongest sign yet that contemporary styles are thriving.

Bourne's latest reinvention of Tchaikovsky – Nutcracker! – sold out at Sadler's Wells. Contact, a show by the American choreographer Susan Stroman that blends contemporary dance and theatre, is doing very well in the West End.

Meanwhile, the more radical wing is very much alive and well. Kontakthof – directed by the German Pina Bausch and featuring two dozen untrained senior citizens from her home town of Wuppertal – sold out at the Barbican in London in December. As David McNeill of the Arts Council put it: "Dance is on a bit of a roll at the moment. It is in a very confident mood.''

There has also been an increase in those who see a career in dance or just want to strut their stuff for an hour or two a week.

There is now an A-level in danceand degree-level courses at many dance schools and universities. The Council for Dance Education and Training says dance school places are oversubscribed by four to one.

Laban was founded by the German dancer, choreographer and theoretician Rudolf von Laban, who was born in Hungary in 1879 and died in 1958.

During the first 20 years of the century, he helped to lay down the roots of German modern dance. The style eventually reached America where it was to influence Martha Graham, the pioneer of American modern dance.

Some of the details of his life are murky, especially his involvement in the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games, for which he organised the dance component. He left Germany in 1938 for England, where he formed the Art of Movement Studio with Lisa Ullmann in Manchester in 1946. Relocated to its first London home in New Cross in 1974, this was to become the Laban Centre.

Marion North, Laban's principal since 1972, said: "Contemporary dance has been the Cinderella of the arts world for more than 50 years, but now I think it is time for us to come into our own.''

John Slade, 19, from Leyton, east London, who is doing a BA at the centre, became interested in dance when he studied Swan Lake at school for his A-levels. "It was really Bourne who opened up the gateway for male dancers," he said. "He has been responsible for bringing contemporary dance into the mainstream."

Laura Greenhalgh, 21, a post-graduate student from Wiltshire, said: "There are loads of different careers. You can become a choreographer for commercials or in the film world, you can work in dance or movement therapy or you can teach ... There are more opportunities than you might think."