Dance Palace

Dance Palace is a multidisciplinary arts and community center that serves residents of the remote region of West Marin. Its programs reach nearly 4,000 people each year through offerings by well-known and local artists in dance, theater, film, and music. Dance Palace also provides performing arts classes for children and adults, and performances and workshops for local students, in and out of school. This grant advances the Performing Arts Program’s Communities strategy by ensuring a home for community-based arts and culture in a rural part of the Bay Area, where few arts resources exist.

From its modest beginnings in 1971 as a dance studio, the Dance Palace has evolved into an active community center that features a performing arts program serving the residents of West Marin, an area that consists of a group of unincorporated semi-rural coastal villages separated from each other and the larger towns of Eastern Marin, with limited access to the arts and significant populations living well below the poverty line. Performing arts activities include performances of classical, world, and folk music, dance, theater, and film, and reach 3,000 to 4,000 people a year. Support for a rebranding project will increase capacity for the board and staff to build and develop audiences and increased earned and contributed income through a redesigned logo and website, board development and training, and a marketing plan that includes social media.