The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (EBCPA), located in the heart of Richmond since 1969, offers a superb program of instruction in music, dance, and performance to over 1600 students throughout the East Bay annually. Attendance at our public performances exceeds 30,000, and our film and video productions have repeatedly reached a national audience. Our repertoire training include African music and dance, Mexican music and dance, contemporary music and dance, contemporary ballet, instrumental and vocal jazz, Southeast Asian music and dance, choral singing, theater and film acting and production, with a wide variety of class formats and skill levels.

EBCPA's extensive range of culture-specific classes and ensembles honors the richness of the East Bay's diverse populations, giving vigorous expression to their living artistic traditions and enabling individuals to engage in a personal discovery of their cultural heritage. Side-by-side with our celebration of cultural identity is our commitment to the pluralistic values of the community in which we all live. The explicit goal of generating opportunities for opening new lines of communication, finding common ground and facilitating social reconciliation through shared artistic experience informs everything we do at the Center.

The objectives of the East Bay Center's unique integrated curriculum are first, to train students rigorously in the basic skills required for a particular artistic repertoire; second, to create structured opportunities in which the students can transpose the skills they have learned in one performance context and apply them to other artistic environments. Through comparative study, they acquire a greater conceptual and practical command of those skills by fitting them into a much broader range of applications, and they develop an awareness and appreciation of a performance style that they might otherwise not have explored. The third objective of EBCPA's integrated curriculum is to encourage students to actively incorporate their artistic activities into their lives as members of a community by grounding their performance projects in socially relevant issues. The spirit of this commitment to stay connected with the community is very much a part of all our performances including EBCPA's 2nd Annual Faculty Performance Series. This year, featuring 11 of our 60 outstanding artists/instructors, we celebrate not only the depth of commitment to the community and to teaching among our faculty but the heights of their creative and performance skills.

As a community arts organization, distinct from both traditional conservatories and institutions of higher education, EBCPA has developed a highly successful educational model that has drawn national attention. Because it derives its strength from its active involvement in the community and its deep commitment to preserving and invigorating its artistic life, EBCPA strives to serve a pivotal role as an agent of social reconciliation and community restructuring in an increasingly factionalized world.

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