The folks at Brooklyn Academy of Music are intrepid both on stage and off. And so, after the Mark Morris Dance Company performed there Thursday, 650 members of the audience filed into buses and made their way to the Brooklyn’s Navy Yard.

No, it wasn’t for a journey out to sea, but rather to the vast filming complex the Steiner Studios, which had its own intrepid evening, playing host to a gala for the first time.

Steiner Studios is a gem of the redeveloping waterfront. Like other projects in the borough, it owes a little something to BAM, which has stimulated economic activity, promoted the arts, and brought diverse neighborhoods together.

“BAM is a microcosm of the borough. It works very hard to play a constructive role in the neighborhood,” the chairman of BAM, Alan Fishman, said.

BAM draws bigwigs from throughout the borough, from a dean at Medgar Evers College, Fred Price, to the co-executive director of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, Marianna Koval, to supporters of the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, among them Martha and Robert Rubin, Constance Roosevelt, and Charles Hamm.

But BAM isn’t just for Brooklynites. As demonstrated by the faces in the crowd – and the travel routes for the buses that delivered guests home at the end of the night – a lot of BAM’s supporters hail from Manhattan (and some from Queens and the Bronx, too). There was the great couple of art historians, John Richardson and Rosamond Bernier, the art dealer Stephen Haller, and the voracious art collector Beth Rudin DeWoody. BAM attracts people who work in the performing arts, such as new music and theater producer Donald Sanders, who is about to open a play at the Alliance Francaise about Vincent Van Gogh’s relationship with music, and the president of the New Victory Theater, Cora Cahan. And sitting together during the performance were Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed and Philip and Holly Critchlow.

At the gala, nearby a replica of the Statue of Liberty, were dancer Jane Comfort; choreographer Mark Morris; a director of the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Floria Lasky, and leading lights of Lincoln Center, including City Opera chairwoman Susan Baker and board member Howard Kelberg, and Jazz at Lincoln Center board member Jonathan Rose.

Everyone, including the executive producer of BAM, Joseph Melillo, and its president, Karen Brooks Hopkins, dined on tomato tart, cod, and ice cream cake. But not everyone was into the waterfront adventure: Top supporters of so many prominent causes, Jennie and Richard DeScherer, instead had supper across the street from BAM at Thomas Beisl with the director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, and his wife Pam.

The chairmen of the gala were Mr. Fishman – founder of Independence Bank, which he recently sold – and his wife, Judith. The Fishmans have made quite the mark on Brooklyn philanthropy, not only through their personal involvement but also through the Independence Community Foundation.