Peninsula Lively Arts and its subsidiary Peninsula Ballet Theatre are closing after six decades teaching and performing dance in San Mateo County, leaving a gaping hole in the local dance scene.
“There’s this ecological effect,” Interim Executive Director Debbie Chinn told the Chronicle, citing the 200 students the company serves each year, its 20 employees, its 17 community group tenants as well as its massive annual offerings across 59 years of existence, including “The Nutcracker,” “The Hip-Hop Nutcracker” and its international dance festival.
Melia Kramer, who’s moved up through the company from student to company dancer to intern to faculty member, said she was “heartbroken.”
“Other kids won’t get the chance to find themselves and grow,” she said. “I also think about the students who are there now who are losing their home and who are losing a place that they go to to feel free.”
Chinn said the main reason for the decision was the redevelopment of the San Mateo strip mall where the company has rented a 34,000-square-foot facility for 15 years.
Owner Brookfield Properties first submitted a proposal to turn the strip mall on Concar Drive and South Grant Street into a residential development in 2020, three years before the state gave San Mateo a mandate to build 7,015 new units of housing by 2031 (as part of broader statewide mandates). Eventually, Brookfield offered a 3,300-square-foot space on the property to the dance nonprofit, but Chinn said that proposal was later scrapped amid residents’ concerns about parking and traffic easements at the 847-unit site.
Josh Roden, president of Brookfield Residential NorCal, declined to comment.
“Carmina Burana” at Peninsula Ballet Theatre. (Stefan Cohen)
For Peninsula Lively Arts, finding another affordable property in the region by 2027, when construction is slated to begin, proved impossible.
“As a dance company, we have to have certain kinds of amenities,” Chinn explained. “If a 6-foot man’s going to lift a woman, you’ve got to have tall ceilings.”
A good HVAC system is also a must, as is specialized flooring, she added. The school requires both individual studios and a lobby drop-off area for parents. But Chinn couldn’t find any viable options that checked all those boxes and offered nonprofit rates.
“It’s not a friendly place for the arts,” Chinn said of the region. “It’s just too expensive.”
Board President Susan Condon concurred.
“After reviewing every reasonable pathway, we concluded that the responsible course was to wind down operations thoughtfully, rather than extend uncertainty for our students, staff, and families,” she said in a statement.
Real estate was only the proximate cause, though. Chinn also pointed out that the company has never had a fundraising arm, instead relying overwhelmingly on tuition and ticket sales. It also doesn’t have the capital to hire someone to build such a department, she said.
Kelley Hashemi as the Sugar Plum Fairy in Peninsula Ballet Theatre’s “The Nutcracker.” (Vin Eiamvuthikorn)
A $150,000 campaign to support this year’s “Nutcracker” netted only $100,000. While it was still the biggest fundraiser the company’s ever pulled off, it fell short enough below goal to expose the limitations of a staff that doesn’t have a development director.
“Everyone’s going to give to an emergency campaign like that, but we just don’t have the donor pyramid that is healthy enough for this organization to continue,” Chinn said.
Peninsula Lively Arts isn’t San Francisco Ballet. “It is homegrown,” Chinn explained.
You watch the progression of what these pre-ballet kids do at the age of 4, when they’re little tiny mice in ‘The Nutcracker,’ and they grow up, and then they get to be Drosselmeyer. They get to be Clara,” she added. “You watch a young child move through their adolescence through dance.”
It’s the kind of school, Kramer said, where “you’ll find teenagers to people who are probably 80 years old.”
“Even if they don’t have anything similar about their personal life, they all have ballet that they can connect over.”
This article originally published at Exclusive: Bay Area dance company and school to shut down after nearly 60 years.
