San Francisco Ballet Building like the American Ballet Theatre, were also housed in rented spaces and buildings shared with other performing arts groups. In 1983, the San Francisco Ballet Association became “the first American ballet company and school to break this pattern by constructing new quarters for itself." Beverly Willis performed exhaustive research into the function of a ballet building, conducting numerous interviews with dancers on their needs and visiting the studios of major European ballet companies.The building includes facilities to support all of the activities of the company and school with the exception of set storage. The eight rehearsal and classroom studios have
Ballet San Jose 2006 shortened its name to simply Ballet San Jose. In 2003 the company gained benefactor and current chairman of the board John Fry, co-founder of Fry's Electronics.with a 1 million dollar contribution. Fry helped the company survive the dot-com crash and continued to support the company until he closed it in 2016. Over the years Fry became personally involved and Ballet San Jose faced increasing Fry's support, prompting Karen Loewenstern, founding board chair of Cleveland San Jose Ballet to say "...he bought himself a ballet company." By 2007, still lead by founding artistic director, Dennis Nahat, there was a resident