COMMUNITY
PERFORMANCES
We love producing dance performance opportunities for our local artists,
cultivating togetherness and sharing their passion for dance.
Performance programs are a fun and exciting opportunity and support our continued efforts in building a vibrant and sustainable dance community. With a strong focus on youth, diversity, equity and inclusion our community and cultural events offer free and low cost opportunities to engage with dance.
OUR ANNUAL COMMUNITY EVENTS ARE
Communities' Finest Dance Showcase - Palm Springs Cultural Center
Dancin' In the Streets - Palm Springs VillageFest
We are most grateful to the Western Wind Foundation, our principal scholarship funding partner. Additionally, we receive scholarship sponsorship support from numerous community stakeholders, individual donors, and foundations. Our on-going collaboration includes our work with the Palm Springs Unified School District, The Find Food Bank, the Palm Springs Cultural Center, The City of Palm Springs, and community advisors and volunteers. We are so grateful for their commitment and generosity.
Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley have a world-wide reputation as a premier vacation and retirement destination. What is less known is that the Coachella Valley has a high rate of poverty which especially impacts our BIPOC communities and youth. Within the Palm Springs School District, for instance, nearly 85% of our students come from disadvantaged homes. Segments of our community have more than twice the state’s average of residents with income below the poverty level.
Interesting to know is that the Palm Springs community has a number of long-standing, independently owned, amazing dance schools who have made significant contributions to the development of youth enrolled in their schools. Educating, training, mentoring, and developing skills and discipline have taken students into college university programs, dance on Broadway, in television, and dancing with companies such as Alvin Ailey Dance and Boston Ballet. Still, others have gone on to make dance education their career, opening their own dance schools, and into careers unrelated to dance that require acquired skills such as those learned in dance, to be successful. Studies show a student’s academic attainments are improved through dance. Despite these great achievements historically these local studios have operated as silos, and opportunities for the underserved in the community have been disproportionate.
Our educational programs also reach into the public school system, and public and private arts programs to enrich arts programming and ensure access to dance for underserved kids and their classmates who have the inability to attend studio classes. Besides involving students in special projects, our "Teach the Teacher" program supports the ongoing growth of public-school dance teachers and fortifies the public-school learning experience for students.
COMMUNITIES' FINEST SHOWCASE
TRANSFORMING A COMMUNITY THROUGH DANCE
We promote and create great dance performance, education opportunities, and community programming because dance has an outstanding positive effect on our physical, mental and psychological well-being.
It expands social and cultural interaction, and provides an overall community feeling of well-being and togetherness. The motivation imparted to its pupils provides self-discovery and discipline which is socially beneficial in a variety of ways.
It makes life better, this is why we do it! Dance, Learn, Love.
