In the early 1960s, Deane and Barbara Crockett of the Sacramento Civic Ballet (now Sacramento Ballet), heard about Regional Dance Festivals through Doris Hering’s articles in Dance Magazine and from Ben Sommers of Capezio. They liked the idea and attended an Atlanta Festival, returning home full of enthusiasm to reproduce it on the West Coast.
On May 28-29, 1966, the Sacramento Civic Ballet hosted the first Pacific Regional Festival in Sacramento, CA, and the Pacific Western Regional Ballet Festival Association was formed. Doris Hering served as the first adjudicator. Initial companies included Ballet Classique Concert Group of Eugene, Dorothy Fisher Concert Group of Seattle, Cairns Dance Group of Tacoma, Olympia Ballet Company, Peninsula Ballet Theatre, Marin Civic Ballet, Ballet Arts of Alameda, Theatre Ballet Repertoire Group of Idaho Falls, Pomona Valley Jr. Ballet, Pasadena Dance Theatre, Whittier Civic Ballet, and Laguna Beach Civic Ballet. Honored guests were Dorothy Alexander, Selma Jeanne Cohen, Ben Sommers, Anatole Chujoy, Richard Englund, Ruthanna Boris, Jack Cole, Martha Hill and Alice Bingham. Faculty included Violette Verdy, principal dancer with New York City ballet and David Wood, principal dancer with the Martha Graham Company.
Regional Dance America co-founder Lila Zali served as the president of the Pacific Region for eleven years. During her tenure, the Pacific Region dancers and directors were encouraged to attend the Craft of Choreography Conference (now RDA’s National Choreography Intensive), which had been founded by Josephine Schwartz in the Northeast Region and guided by Doris Hering, to encourage the development of original choreographic works. In 1973, the National Association for Regional Ballet (NARB) was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in New York, joining the five Regional Dance organizations across the country. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded NARB its first major grant, and Doris Hering was hired as the first executive director.
The fourth RDA National Festival took place in Phoenix, AZ in May of 2017. A renewal of membership in the Pacific Region commenced in 2022 as RDA/Pacific re-imagined itself. An inaugural festival was held in Reno, NV in March of 2022.
