In 1971 the Dance Palace was sort of a communal hardwood floor that a handful of people supported with little more than small change raised by doing odd jobs.
In 1996 it's one of the foremost staples of cultural and community life in West Marin. It's a school, concert hall, art gallery, town-meeting room, children's center, and theater operating on a $175,000 annual budget.
Co-founder and current Executive Director Carol Friedman this week said the Dance Palace started as whimsical pursuit by four people "looking for a place to dance...
"It wasn't as if we had a vision of a community center. People [eventually] came to us and said, 'I'd like to see this happen, and I can help make it happen.'"
"The Vietnam war was raging," recalled co-founder Nancy Hemmingway this week. "Everybody was demonstrating. It was the year busing was approved by the Supreme Court. There was still that hope that by demonstrating, you could improve things."
It was such idealism that made an impulsive venture like the Dance Palace possible. "It felt like you could jump right in and not know where it was going to end up," Hemmingway said.
Added Inverness Realtor Dan Morse, a former Dance Palace board president, "It was a good place for positive energy to go when there was an awful lot of negative energy worldwide."
"People could just say, 'Let's start a tap-dancing class! Let's start a film series! There was space in your life, and people don't seem to have that kind of slack time anymore. Now it's just more difficult [for young people] to make ends meet."
To celebrate its first quarter century, the Dance Palace this Saturday night, Sept. 21, will throw itself a free community bash. "It's going to be a great party," predicted Friedman.
"Let's just all get together and have a good time, reminisce, eat some great food, and boogie."
A potluck picnic in the center's front yard starts at 6 p.m. Those attending have been asked to bring food, beverages, or dessert to share.
Participants will have the chance to put something - a photo, button, or other small memento - into a Dance Palace time capsule that will be buried and dug up at the community center's 50th-anniversary celebration in 2021.
Here's a look at how the Dance Palace has evolved:
Back in August 1971, a Berkeley dance teacher named Felicia Corth heard from a friend that a notice had been posted on the window of the Point Reyes Emporium building.
Corth introduced Friedman, then a visiting college student who had hitchhiked from New York, and Hemmingway, now the Inverness librarian, and the three of them - plus musicians Sylvia Pippen and John Timothy - came to Point Reyes Station to check it out.
"We were a bunch of fairly eccentric people," Friedman said.
Ironically, Corth, the common bond that linked people and place, was the only one of the group who declined to take part in the venture.
For about three months, six people lived communally in the tiny balcony area in what is now Cabaline Saddle Shop, and they used the main Cabaline floor for the first Dance Palace.
About Christmastime, they moved upstairs into a vacated apartment in the Emporium.
In the Dance Palace commune's first year, some of the faces changed, and the group withstood one of the coldest winters on record with no reliable source of heat.
"The fireplace had been condemned, unbeknownst to us," Hemmingway said. "We drank lots of Irish Coffees to keep warm."
And although the cost of living in West Marin was far lower than it is today, pockets were often empty. The group held down various odd jobs to stay afloat.
Almost one year after the Dance Palace was born, Hemmingway, Friedman, and two others found themselves at Civic Center talking to lame-duck Supervisor Bud Barr, who suggested they apply for a county grant.
Right then and there, they borrowed a typewriter and hammered out a proposal, and by the end of the day the Board of Supervisors had authorized a $5,000 grant.
"They passed it that day," said Hemmingway, noting the trend toward spontaneity. "With that grant certain requirements were placed on us. It kind of standardized what we were doing."
It emphasized children at every turn. For example, Inverness actor and director Gene Ptak developed a summer stock theater program for young teens at the Dance Palace that thrives to this day, as do children's art programs with Colleen Jolley and Jennifer Snyder.
"There's always been this energy at the Dance Palace with the kids," said Ptak. "They've always made a serious effort to compliment what the schools did or provide what the schools couldn't."
The Dance Palace became a state-sanctioned nonprofit in 1977, but the center's major turning point came in July 1987, when the board of directors announced plans to move.
They had hoped to buy the Emporium, but then-owner Alice Carrell's asking price far exceeded the appraisal price. Also considered for a future home were the Red Barn and the old Sandcastle Gallery on Mesa Road.
The new complex finally took shape between 1989 and 1991. First to be completed was the main hall. The second phase included construction of the lobby, kitchen, board room, and office, and provided a physical connection to Sacred Heart's old church, which became an integral part of the Dance Palace.
Although budgeted for just under $600,000, the project wound up costing more than $750,000. Most of the money was donated, and more than 200 volunteers pitched in to help create the new building.
"The old space was certainly intimate and pretty wonderful," said Morse, recalling that the Emporium, with its U-shaped balcony, was ideal for theater. "Man, it was something."
Added Friefeld, "The community grew and changed, and we grew with it, [but] sometimes I miss the days when it was smaller and homier."
In any case and in any space, the Dance Palace dances on.
Seeing the inside of the Emporium for the first time on that August day in 1971, Friedman recalled, "the floor just looked like it was made to be danced on, and that's what we did. We danced on it...
"And that's what we're going to do [on Saturday night] - dance on it."