Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC) builds and supports a vital and inclusive community for movers of all ages and styles. Founded in 1958, SADC provides dance education, institutional support for artists, a performance and rehearsal venue, and partnerships with other community-based organizations.
Racial equity is at the core of SADC’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism. Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC) is unpacking, examining and addressing its history as a white-founded and white-led organization. The organization and its employees, board and community members are actively working to dismantle oppressive systems and structures that impact programming, hiring, and access. We are providing space, voice, and a home for BIPOC students and artists to have meaningful experiences in dance as students, teachers, staff, board members, choreographers, performers, and audience members. SADC will continue to be a place for dancers of all backgrounds to feel welcome, seen, valued, and uplifted by the organization
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SADC believes that the work of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility should be a part of all aspects of the nonprofit organization - from hiring processes to dance styles on the schedule to performance opportunities. Continuing key work in 2025 includes: for all to feel welcome, fully seen, and able to show up as their whole selves in the process of dancing, teaching, learning and creating.
You can explore some of our recent initiatives below.
We are committed to these efforts now more than ever.
1. Art as Practice: SADC is grounded in dance as our praxis. As a community and institution, we are creative, rigorous, principled and have integrity with our actions. We create freedom to play, “fail,” and to try again.
2. Connection: SADC is a space for connection within ourselves, amongst our community members, and with dance communities around the world. We embody connection with our past, present, and future.
3. Evolving: SADC is evolving as an institution. We work to be responsive to our community needs and adaptable to the dynamic dance landscape.
4. Inclusivity: SADC welcomes and encourages all voices, ages, and the many reasons we come to dance. SADC is inclusive, intergenerational, serving both professional and recreational movers of different dance styles and abilities.
5. Joy: SADC provides joy through movement, learning, teaching, collaboration, and witnessing.
6. Longevity: SADC is grounded in our legacy, spanning over sixty years. It is a dance home for students that grow into teachers and artistic practitioners. SADC is consistently in motion towards meaningful longevity and sustaining dance as a viable art form for those creating, collaborating, and witnessing.
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center’s mission is to build and support a vital and inclusive community for movers of all ages and styles. Founded in 1958, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center provides dance education, institutional support for artists, a performance and rehearsal venue, and partnerships with other community-based organizations. Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC) shares in the work of re-imagining and creating equitable and positive spaces for expression in the East Bay.
These guidelines have been created by our administrators and board members based on our belief that a dance community is for everybody. These statements are intended to provide our students, parents, faculty, staff, board, audience members and visitors with guidance in daily settings and ensure that everyone participating has the opportunity for a positive and supportive experience. We want all people participating in any way at SADC to feel inspired, motivated, challenged and enriched. If you have questions, feedback, or concerns about your experience at SADC, please speak with a staff member in-person or by calling us: 510-654-5921. Our board, faculty and staff are here to support you. You can also visit our website for contact information for our Program & Administrative team members: www.shawl-anderson.org/contact.
I. Community: SADC is an inclusive, nurturing dance family
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center is a multigenerational dance space serving people of all ages. We honor and respect each person, and embrace each person’s:
• Race
• Age
• Gender identity
• Sexual identity
• Disability
• Physical appearance
• Ethnicity
• Religion Income level
• Job status
• Citizenship status
• Home status
• Any other status or characteristics
This is our standard for the community. We hold all people at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center whether in-person, online or in an off-site location to this standard in order to maintain a safe space for all guests and employees. Thank you for helping us fulfill our commitment to making all members of the community feel a sense of belonging at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.
II. Inclusion: EVERY person is entitled to a welcoming dance experience. Treat others how they want to be treated; voice your needs so that others know how to support you.
Dancers, teachers, and parents must help to sustain an inclusive environment where all dancers are supported, regardless of age, level, body size, race, and gender. Welcome all students, teachers, staff, audiences, families and artists, regardless of differences in background, interests, skills and aesthetics. Learn each the names and personal pronouns of those around you. Get to know who is in the room! A dancer should be able to attend class, an audience member witness a show and an artist create work without feeling self-conscious or alienated. This is not a place for hurtful and harming words or actions of any kind, whether it be in person, on social media, or texting.
III. Responsibility: Take care of our dance home and each other—this space belongs to YOU
If you hear something or feel uncomfortable about an interaction or situation at SADC, please reach out to a faculty or staff member as soon as possible. We believe in dialogue and restorative practices. We are all constantly growing and learning about our actions, intent, and impact. Let’s call each other in. Help keep our facilities clean and tidy by replacing items where you found them and properly disposing of recycling, compost and trash. If you see a way you can help a teacher, a parent, audience member, student, renter, neighbor or staff member, please do offer your help. Help us be a good neighbor. Be mindful of how fast you drive in the area, where you park or double park, and how you greet the neighbors as you walk to and from events at SADC. Let’s be in community together both inside of our facilities, outside of the facilities and online. Remember that SADC is navigating dynamic and ever-changing challenges related to COVID. Thank you for being patient with our staff and faculty as we work to bring you a memorable, supported and connected community dance experience.
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and its board strive to have racial equity at the core of all programs and processes. This is ongoing work and takes many forms - from critical dance pedagogy to committees, to learning circles and celebration month activities. We also seek guidance and learn from our colleagues, including past work with Tammy Johnson, Sarah Crowell, Nyama McCarthy-Brown, and Dancing Around Race.
One of the biggest DEIA efforts this past year has been the expansion of programming to BANDALOOP Studios in Oakland (1601/1603 18th Street). To share space with longtime colleagues of BANDALOOP has offered new opportunities for adult classes, the annual Winter Dance workshop, youth classes, and Queering Dance Festival rehearsals and workshops. BANDALOOP is a wheelchair accessible space located in West Oakland.
The Board of Directors are the stewards for the nonprofit. In 2024, the Center had two rounds of open calls for new board members. We are honored to have 7 community members serving on the board. Click here to learn more about each board member.
Reflecting on the past few years, back in 2019 SADC offered 6 kinds of dance styles and classes each week in the youth and adult programs. In 2024, on an average week the studio offers 11 styles and classes. We love the expansion of movement and voice.
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center is located on Huichin*, also known as Berkeley, on the unceded homelands of the Chochenyo Ohlone. We present this land acknowledgment to thank and pay our respects to the Chochenyo Ohlone elders who stewarded this land. We are in solidarity with local Indigenous communities who are living and thriving today on their ancestral homelands. We give thanks for the natural world around us - the hills to the east, the bay to the west. We feel the passing of time and the change of seasons with the Gingko trees on Alcatraz Ave. We remember the dancing and artmaking that has taken place on this land; celebrate the art being shared day to day; and dream of future gatherings, dances, and creative expression.
*Huichin
xučyun (Huichin) is the home territory of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people, it extends from what we know today as the Berkeley hills to the Bay Shore, from West Oakland to El Cerrito.
SADC values yearly professional development opportunities for admin team members, board members, teachers, and accompanists. 2024 work has explored psychological safety in the workplace, fiscal sponsorship + power dynamics, conflict resolution, and neurodiversity.
In June 2024, SADC began a new chapter with a three-person co-leadership model. This exciting change is about stewarding and shepherding the organization with a sense of collective care, collective holding, and valuing many voices to support a multi-faceted intergenerational organization.
As racial equity is an ongoing process, we invite and welcome feedback and suggestions from students, staff, and faculty, in aligning our policies and programs to anti-racist practices. We hope to strengthen and inspire a healthy dialogue of ideas and methods from the community at large as we continue to build our practices to increase racial equity and accountability within SADC and beyond. Feedback may be submitted to board@shawl-anderson.org or meeting requests may be made with this email address. All of the staff and directors of SADC also welcome your feedback.
When Frank Shawl and Victor Anderson sank roots in the Bay Area from New York City 67 years ago, they saw a need for a home for contemporary dance in the East Bay to enlighten, inspire, uplift and create fellowship in the community. At that time, there were few places where young dancers could be exposed to a variety of movement styles, from modern to ballet and more, and schooled in the art’s ethos of community, celebration and discipline. Without a home for dance, the art form was unable to grow in the East Bay, and modern dance and its sister genres were unable to enhance the cultural and spiritual well-being of the community. Having taken to heart the approach of their New York mentor, May O'Donnell, who believed that dance should be available to all who desired it, Shawl and Anderson set out to create the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC) in Berkeley in 1958.
Frank Shawl
December 27, 1931 - October 4, 2019
Frank Shawl was the co-founder with Victor Anderson of the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley. Frank was active as a teacher, performer, and choreographer in the Bay Area for over 50 years. The Shawl-Anderson Dance Company was an active dance repertory group in the '60's and '70's and spawned many of today's prominent dance artists.
Prior to coming to the Bay Area, Frank performed mainly in New York City. He appeared in numerous Broadway and network television shows and toured throughout the United States and Canada. He appeared in concert with the late Charles Weidman and for over eight years with the May O'Donnell Dance Company. He returned to New York in the role of assistant to Miss O'Donnell, as well as having taught, directed, and performed in Amsterdam and throughout the Netherlands.
He was the recipient of grants from the N.E.A. and California Arts Council, and in 1990 received, along with Mr. Anderson, the Isadora Duncan Award for Sustained Achievement in Dance. In 1991 Frank received the Isadora Duncan "Special Award" for the production of "Time Over Time" with June Watanabe and Marni Thomas-Wood. In 2001, they received the Ruth Beckford Award for Extraordinary Contributions in the Field of Dance. Well into his 70s and 80s, Frank continued to perform actively and danced in works by Della Davidson, Sonya Delwaide, Randee Paufve, and Dandelion Dancetheater. In 2012, Frank, Victor and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center were awarded a Goldie Lifetime Achievement Award from the SF Bay Guardian.
Victor Anderson
August 10, 1928 - February 7, 2017
Victor Anderson began his career as a musician. He studied piano, composition and orchestration, but after seeing an American Ballet Theater performance of Anthony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, he was immediately drawn toward dance. Within a few years, he had studied ballet intensively with several famous teachers, among them, Igor Schwezoff and Eugene Loring, the Diaghilev dancers, Theodore Kosloff, Maria Baldina, Vera Nemtchinova, and especially with Pavlova 's onetime partner, Aubrey Hitchins.
His interest in modern dance was awakened in the course of a professional appearance at Carnegie Hall with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. He soon thereafter took up his serious study of modern dance with longtime associates of Martha Graham, May O'Donnell and Gertrude Shurr, the latter having also been a member of the Denishawn and Humphrey-Weidman companies.
In addition to his studies in ballet and modern dance, he also worked under the direction of Jerome Robbins on Broadway before becoming a member of the May O'Donnell Dance Company. While he was a member of her company, he began his teaching career at the Grammercy School of Music and Dance, whose faculty also included such well-known dance figures as Robert Joffrey and Norman Walker. As a guest teacher, he conducted master classes sponsored by the Oakland Dance Association, the Oakland Recreation Department, California Dance Educators, and the University of Arizona at Tucson.
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