In 1982, Dancers’ Group was founded by a highly respected group of teachers, choreographers, community activists and students. Of this group, three primary founders emerged providing the vision and skills to create a new entity. The founders were Vernon Fuquay, executive director; Aaron Osborne, teacher, choreographer and artistic director; and Wayne Hazzard, dancer and school/facility manager. The facility that the organization occupied was known to many as Footwork Studio and to a later generation of artists, students and the general public, Dancers’ Group Studio Theater. In its first ten years, Dancers’ Group emerged as a highly respected school and presenting organization aiming to unify, strengthen, and amplify the contemporary dance community in San Francisco.

In 1992, the region’s current service organization, Dance Bay Area, dissolved and Dancers’ Group stepped forward to ensure that several of Dance Bay Area’s vital services would remain. These services to the dance community continue today and are: fiscal sponsorship and In Dance.

Dancers’ Group was evicted from its home at 3221 22nd Street in the Mission at the height of the space-crisis that erupted from the dot-com boom in 1999. The loss of their physical space allowed Dancers’ Group to investigate its mission and services to the dance field. Since that time, Dancers’ Group has developed new services, re-granting programs and presenting opportunities for dance artists and audiences.

Today, Dancers’ Group is recognized as a national model in the field of dance. Through a network of partnerships that have given it access to supporting dance across the broad spectrum of styles, forms, cultures and practices in the Bay Area, Dancers’ Group has built programs and services designed to fulfill the wide-ranging needs of the region’s diverse dance community.