About Us

The Venice Beach Skate Dance Plaza is home to the most globally recognized skate dance was community in the world. The iconic outdoor roller skating phenomenon known as “roller dancing” born in in the mid 70’s with the advent of the polyurethane skate wheel and found its’ most famous home steps away from the Venice Beach Boardwalk, amidst the gritty urban beach landscape that served as a popular Los Angeles recreational playground.  Every weekend people of all ages, races, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds have gathered in Venice Beach to admire and share in the free skate lessons and solo and group skate performances that have been immortalized in movies, television and music videos.  Aside from its influence on popular culture, the Venice Beach Skate Dance Community has preserved its rich artistic expression in a safe, free, public recreational activity that has served the public and participants alike.

The City of Los Angeles recognized the immense cultural contribution of the Venice Beach skate dance community in 1999 when the City Council officially designated an area of the newly designed Venice Beach Park as Skate Dance Plaza — allowing this unique community its rightful place alongside other iconic Venice Beach recreational attractions (Muscle Beach, Venice Basketball Courts, Venice Beach Skate Board Park).The Skate Dance Plaza continues to provide recreational entertainment to thousands from around the world every weekend hosting FREE skate dance lessons as well as group and solo public performances; but it also serves as a leader and partner in the international Skate Dance Community as its members spread a shared mission of peace, tolerance and unity through roller dance education and recreational and professional event participation. 

Building a community as resilient as Venice Beach Skate Dance Association over the course of 40+ years has brought with it many challenges and threats to our existence.  With an interest to preserve the existence of the Venice Beach skate dance culture, its public venue residing at  Skate Dance Plaza, and the safe, outdoor non-commercial activity of recreational dance on skates to music as an unpaid public activity, the members banded together to formalize their organization in 2012, and as a result, the Venice Beach Skate Dance Association formed as a 501 (c)(3) registered California non-profit corporation to uphold a set of bylaws designed to preserve our cultural heritage and promote our mission of sharing, preserving and protecting one of a few remaining public recreational cultures still alive in the Los Angeles community. 

For more information about the Venice Beach Skate Dance Association, please contact us!