East Bay Center for the Performing Arts

In 2024-25, we served over 300 students at our Main Site, with several others on the waitlist. We averaged about 60 group classes, 74 private lessons, and 7 resident ensemble rehearsals per week, and produced over 20 performances.Summer Intensive: In July-August 2025, 101 YADP students completed our five-week, 200-hour Summer Intensive immersion session. The Summer Intensive requires cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary training, as well as technical instruction in music, dance, and contemporary theater forms and culminates with three evenings of student presentations.Young Artist Diploma Program: Instruction for all 100 Diploma students averaged 6-8 hours per week of instruction consisting of lessons, classes, and ensembles based on both specific repertoire traditions and East Bay Centers Deep Roots Wide World Curriculum. Students participated in individual recitals in March and November and group recitals in April and December. The Centers Program Leadership team continued to develop and advance curriculum and learning goals for all seven program pathways, with a focus on clear, explicit youth development outcomes and strategies that are the foundation of our students success.Resident Companies: Our seven youth resident companies, focusing on celebrating cultural artforms (i.e. West African Music and Dance, Mexican Music and Dance) enroll 50 advanced Center students to reach local audiences of thousands of community members annually. In 2024, Resident Companies performed in 11 community events total. In December 2024, three Resident Companies - Voices of Reason, Iron Triangle Theater Company, and Richmond Chamber Ensemble, participated in the Downtown Holiday Festival: A Richmond Nutcracker.

Youth Leadership: The Center continued to offer opportunities for our students to connect to their community, while building a strong sense of ownership.Throughout the year, your Student Leadership Committee met to contribute their ideas to how the Center can continue to improve and be inclusive of all students. This included helping facilitate the New Student Orientation for the Diploma program, forming a welcome committee for Summer Intensive, creating a Spirit Week for the Center, and helping promote our student performances.Additionally, the Center received a grant from the Creative Work Fund to launch a collaboration and artistic commission with Robert Moses. The collaboration involved Robert doing a series of workshops with our students around storytelling and movement, creating an original piece that represents the students' stories. To launch this process, he met with our student leadership group in the fall to get some ideas/a sense of direction on how he might best learn about the Center and it's students. Student leadership helped him create a whiteboard in the CT that asked different questions to students ("What are you most proud of"? What's your favorite part about East Bay Center?" "Who inspires you?" etc) - students responded over the course of a week. In the spring, he met with a group of 12 students to create and choreograph the dance piece, which culminated in a performance in June.Student Support: To support our older students to develop their full artistic, academic and social potential, the Center continued our college scholarship program for Young Artists Diploma Program graduates. The scholarship funded 5 full, renewable scholarships for students who plan to pursue the performing arts in college, 4 four year scholarships (approx $10,000/year) recognizing perseverance and motivation, and $2,000 renewable scholarships for all other graduates. As part of their scholarship,graduates will continue to receive coaching and mentoring from the Centers team of social workers, staff and faculty.