San Francisco Ballet School and other ballet companies that tour the Bay Area. The San Francisco Ballet School Trainee Program, established in 2004, is a one- to two-year pre-professional program for advanced students who have been invited to join by San Francisco Ballet’s artistic director and the School’s associate director. Trainees ranging in age from 16 to 19 participate in daily classes, as well as rehearse and perform SF Ballet repertory and works staged specifically for them. Trainees also participate in workshops and in community outreach, and they perform regularly with San Francisco Ballet and throughout the Bay Area in a variety of settings,
Castro District, San Francisco of their sexuality. Many settled in the Bay Area, San Francisco and Sausalito. In San Francisco, an established gay community had begun in numerous areas including Polk Street (which used to be regarded as the city's gay center from the 1950s to the early 1980s), the Tenderloin and South of Market. The 1950s saw large amounts of families moving out of the Castro to the suburbs in what became known as the "White flight", leaving open large amounts of real estate and creating attractive locations for gay purchasers. By 1963, the Castro's first gay bar was opened called the "Missouri