California Dance Institute (CDI) is an in-school and after-school non-profit arts education program that teaches life and learning skills through dance and music. CDI’s mission is to motivate children to develop a personal standard of excellence by instilling confidence, discipline and focus through the rigor and joy of dance.

"When I asked some of the children — Lupe, Ali, Elizabeth, Juan, Frances and Alonna — why they were there, all had a variety of reasons, but it took Frances to simplify it. “Dancing,” she said, “makes me happy.” Total and utter bliss is a rare human condition, too often limited to moments in childhood that begin to fade when the world beyond dancing opens to a growing up fraught with peril."      

​-Al Martinez, The Los Angeles Times