Green Room Theatre Company Coachella Valley (GRTCCV) is a rarity. The Palm Desert-based outpost is the only professional theater company in the East Valley that tours professional theater and presents Ballet Folklorico to under-resourced neighborhoods.
“Palm Springs has a great richness of excellent theater,” said David Catanzarite, GRTCCV’s Founding Artistic Director. “But outside of the area, there’s very little that’s accessible or affordable for people.”
There’s a hidden benefit to that reality. It has allowed GRTCCV to adhere to its powerful mission.
“It’s important for us to take professional shows with much the same actors and excellent designers you’d see in Palm Springs, to places that are comfortable and familiar for people who couldn’t necessarily afford to travel across the desert to go to a production,” Catanzarite said. “We make our shows accessible to families, and we’re committed to bilingual populations.
“Palm Springs is still a predominantly Anglo population, but beyond Palm Springs, most of the Coachella Valley is anywhere from 70 to 90 percent Latino,” he added.
Another unique component of GRTCCV’s creative structure is the presentation. Oftentimes, the nonprofit prefaces its shows to individuals who have never been to the theater or ballet before.
“We like to have a 15-minute curtain or pre-show dance performance,” Catanzarite said. “We’ve found that a lot of our patrons have never been to live theater at all in their entire life. Not at school, not in church, nowhere. So, this is their first theater experience, and it makes the audience feel comfortable when they see something like Ballet Folklorico, which is something that they know.”
Ballet Folklorico programming will further be enhanced at GRTCCV thanks to a recent grant from the Youth Grantmakers Committee-Coachella Valley Fund via Inland Empire Community Foundation. Catanzarite said the grant will enable the organization to open or expand its programming for under-resourced neighborhoods.
“The grant will help us have ballet folklorico classes in Thermal,” he added. “We started a class last year in there and now we will be able to continue. This grant will also help us provide scholarships just for some of the kids, because some of them have very few resources at all.”
GRTCCV utilizes two professional companies with adult dancers. Several company members teach for GRTCCV.
“We pay our teachers well, more than most of the other places where Ballet Folklorico is taught,” Catanzarite beamed. “I appreciate the great diversity of kids.”
The community, in turn, appreciates GRTCCV’s work.
Catanzarite founded the organization 17 years ago with the head of the organization’s Ballet Folklorico program, Karen Lin. Since then, the co-founders have nurtured a vibrant nonprofit organization, bringing theater to new performers and audiences throughout the Valley.
Auditions for new productions are announced on the company’s website. Individuals interesting in volunteering are encouraged to reach out. Meanwhile, community support is always welcome.
To that end, Catanzarite adds that the company wants to continue building bridges between communities and generations. Some recent milestones include: the 2020 Desert Theatre League Desert Star award for Outstanding Production for a staged reading of “How I Learned to Drive” and Outstanding Production and Outstanding Director for the youth musical “Sister Act.”
The future looks bright, too. Ballet Folklorico classes start Sept. 17, however a new group of individuals may see these classes as brand new opportunities to find unique ways to express themselves more freely.
“For the first time, we have a cohort of five-year-olds,” Catanzarite said. “We also have older kids, teenagers, all the way up to age 18, but this group of five-year-olds will be exciting. It’s great that we can get them started early.
Learn more at grtccv.org.
This story originally appeared in the Desert Sun, September 2025.
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