Smuin Ballet Smuin Ballet Smuin Contemporary Ballet, formerly known as Smuin Ballet, is a touring ballet company based in San Francisco, California. Smuin Ballet performs its season in multiple venues: the Dean Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in Mountain View, the Sunset Center in Carmel, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and at The Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco. Michael Smuin, a former dancer, choreographer and co-artistic director with the San Francisco Ballet and an award-winning choreographer, founded Smuin Contemporary Ballet in 1994. Then known as Smuin Ballet, the "American
San Francisco in the 1970s San Francisco continued to contribute significantly to San Francisco in the 1970s. The black population of San Francisco peaked in the early 1970s; in 1972 one in seven citizens was black. Many African-American residents still lived in the Fillmore district, which had given birth to a thriving jazz scene and been called the Harlem of the West in the 50s and 60s. However, urban redevelopment began to push blacks out of the Fillmore in the late 1960s; by 1980 San Francisco's black population had decreased by 10%. Some Japanese-Americans had returned to the Fillmore after their internment during World War