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After nearly 60 years as a dance school and professional company, Peninsula Lively Arts will be closing its doors on June 30, the organization announced in March. To mark the end of an era and say farewell, the company is holding three dance performances, called “The Last Dance,” June 20-21 at its San Mateo studio.
Peninsula Lively Arts was the umbrella name for an organization that included a ballet company, called Peninsula Ballet Theatre, and a dance school that began with ballet at its core, but also branched out to other forms of dance, with classes in tap, jazz, musical theater for youth and adults.
“We conceptualized, ‘What would we want to show our time with Peninsula Ballet Theatre? How did we want to best encapsulate our tenure here and represent what the spirit of the company is?'” said Director of Artistic Operations Chloe Watson said of “The Last Dance.”
“So we went back through all of our rep and thought about things that were really meaningful and felt like they had an impact, and we brought in some of our community partners and friends that we worked with for many years now, people who rent space in our studios or have been part of the Peninsula International Dance Festival, or we’ve collaborated with. It just feels like one more show with our family,” she said.
The company has long rented studio space to local dance groups and individual dancers, and for the past four years, hosted the Peninsula International Dance Festival. That’s in addition to staging performances in the spring and fall, plus annual traditional and hip-hop productions of “The Nutcracker.”
But “The Last Dance” will not be the end of the story. Some company leaders, including Watson and Peninsula Lively Arts Artistic Director Gregory Amato, along with some faculty and students, will be taking their first steps as a new nonprofit organization called Peninsula Ballet Arts that will launch in July. In addition to some of the same artistic staff, the new organization will, for the next year, also occupy the same studio space as the defunct company.
The new organization will include both a dance school and a company.
“We are moving forward in the same space with our new school, a new organization, a new nonprofit, because our school has 300 people in it, and they’re all wondering, ‘Where are we going to go?,’ so we’ve acquired this space for one more year for the school,” Amato said.
The impending demolition of its studio space — now postponed by a year — was among the factors in Peninsula Lively Arts’ closure; even more crucially, the company had not built a robust donor base and had to rely largely on ticket sales, which is a more unpredictable revenue source.
Peninsula Ballet Arts will begin with outreach to potential donors, Watson said, and the new organization will take a more grassroots approach to fundraising.
“Through the arts, that helps us persevere — politically, emotionally (the arts) are how we express ourselves, how the community expresses itself,” Amato said of the new organization.
In the coming weeks, look for a behind-the-scenes visit to one of Peninsula Lively Arts’ final rehearsals for “The Last Dance” and more information about the new company’s plans.
The Last Dance takes place June 20, 2 and 7 p.m., and June 21 at Peninsula Lively Arts studio, 1880 S. Grant St., San Mateo. $25 youth and seniors/$35 adults; .peninsulalivelyarts.org/the-last-dance.
