Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center

The Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center uses dance as a platform to encourage, inspire, and facilitate the aspirations of young people by engendering within them discipline, pride, determination, humility, respect and an appreciation for the arts. We endeavor to plant seeds of possibility where previously growth and development has been perceived an impossibility.

The Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center (DSPAC) is located in a part of Bedford-Stuyvesant that borders Bushwick to the north. Our award-winning state-of-the art facility has become a springboard for creating community identity and creative activity, which is fostering a cultural revival in the neglected area.

Although, surrounded by economically prosperous neighborhoods, DSPAC was thoughtfully placed in the hub of a cultural desert, to serve the immediate neighborhoods' need for "spaces and places for youth to flourish," where fulfilling even their most basic needs is a constant struggle for the people who live here. This contrast is evident in Bedford Stuyvesant - an iconic neighborhood - where many of our students reside.

For years, politicians and community members alike have been calling for change, saying we need to create spaces that will allow children to open their minds and flourish. Opening DSPAC placed one of the arts' most vivid disciplines right in the epicenter of all the growth and diversity. We are always searching for ways to help the community develop the skills and technique needed to become thinking individuals who assume responsibility for their own growth and success, and are able to compete on the world's stage.