OFFICIAL STATEMENT REGARDING T.U.P.A.C. AND MO MOTION DANCE SCHOOL

An Important Clarification for Our Community Partners, Supporters, and the Public

Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center (T.U.P.A.C.) is aware of statements circulating on social media claiming that T.U.P.A.C. has changed its name to Mo Motion Dance School or is now operating as Mo Motion Dance School and/or Company.

This information is false.

T.U.P.A.C. has not changed its name to Mo Motion Dance School and has not authorized any individual or organization to announce such a change on its behalf.

For the avoidance of doubt:

T.U.P.A.C. and Mo Motion Dance School are separate and unaffiliated organizations.
T.U.P.A.C. has no ownership, management, operational, financial, or organizational affiliation with Mo Motion Dance School and/or Company.
Mo Motion Dance School and/or Company is not a successor organization to T.U.P.A.C.
T.U.P.A.C. has not transferred, assigned, or authorized the use of its name, identity, history, programs, records, intellectual property, or organizational representation to Mo Motion Dance School and/or Company.
Any social-media post, announcement, or other communication stating or implying that T.U.P.A.C. became, changed its name to, merged with, or is affiliated with Mo Motion Dance School and/or Company is not an official communication from T.U.P.A.C.

Our official communications will continue to be issued through T.U.P.A.C.'s authorized channels.

We are making this statement because we value artists, community partners, funders, donors, and the broader Tacoma community, and we do not want anyone to be confused about the identity or status of our organization.

Please rely only on communications issued directly by T.U.P.A.C. through our official website and authorized communication channels.

Thank you to everyone who has supported T.U.P.A.C. and our work in the Tacoma community from July 2017 - June 2026.

Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center (T.U.P.A.C.)
Training Artists. Honoring Heritage. Building Legacy.

THE EVIDENCE

The Anatomy of the Closure T.U.P.A.C.

A Documented Account of Cybercrime, Identity Theft, Forgery and the End of a Tacoma Arts Institution

The following pages will list the timeline of events that began July 8th, 2025.

Copies of relevant correspondence (with sensitive information redacted).
ISP communications records.
Altered Domain registration records.
Administrative access changes.
Email lockout records and access by unauthorized actors.
Banking and grant access issues.
Unauthorized seizure of student and donor data bases.
Screenshots and system logs.
FBI, Police reports and correspondence.

Document: Grant Award Letter Addressed to an Unauthorized Contact

Date: July 21, 2025

This grant award letter from the Washington State Department of Commerce notified Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center that it had been awarded a capital grant of $1,622,000 did not reach me until October 2025.

The letter was addressed to Anthony Polimeni, a member of T.U.P.A.C.'s Board of Directors at that time.

According to T.U.P.A.C.'s records:

Mr. Polimeni was not authorized to replace Executive Director Klair Ethridge as the organization's designated contact for this grant.
He was not authorized to submit changes identifying himself as the organization's primary representative for grant administration.
He was not authorized to use or designate PO Box 5602 as the mailing address for official grant correspondence on behalf of T.U.P.A.C.
The organization's official grant application and prior communications identified different authorized contacts.

The appearance of the following letter addressed to Mr. Polimeni at PO Box 5602 is one of several documented events included in this archive. T.U.P.A.C. has preserved related records as part of its chronology of events surrounding the organization's loss of administrative control over critical accounts and grant administration.

STATE OF WASHINGTON

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

1011 Plum Street SE • PO Box 42525 • Olympia, Washington 98504-2525 • (360) 725-4000

July 21, 2025

Anthony Polimeni

Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center

PO Box 5602

Tacoma, WA 98415

Dear Anthony:

Congratulations! Governor Ferguson recently signed the 2025-27 State Capital Budget, which includes an appropriation of $1,622,000 for the Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center Project. The Department of Commerce, which will administer the project, will retain three percent (up to a maximum of $50,000) to cover our administrative costs. Accordingly, your net grant award will be $1,573,340.

Prior to receiving funds, your organization will need to fulfill the following requirements: • provide documentation of your organization’s financial ability to complete the project. All funds from sources other than the state must be expended, raised, or secured by documented pledges or loans;

• for nonprofit grantees, any property relevant to the project must be owned or secured by a long term lease that remains in effect for a minimum of ten years following the final payment date, the date the facility becomes usable by the public, whichever is later. A lien on owned property is also required when receiving grants over $250,000;

• prevailing wages must be paid for all construction labor costs incurred as of May 20, 2025; • review by the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and any affected Tribes (Governor’s Executive Order 21-02);

• comply with the state’s green buildings standards (RCW 39.35D); and

• five percent of your contracted amount will be held back until project completion.

Please fill out the Contract Readiness Survey and submit at your earliest convenience. Also enclosed is a comprehensive set of contracting guidelines to assist you with the process. If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact your Project Manager, Michele Manu, at Michele.Manu@commerce.wa.gov.

Sincerely,

Addeline Craig, Managing Director

Community Capital Facilities

THE LETTER WE NEVER WANTED TO WRITE

A Letter of Gratitude and Farewell to the State of Washington emailed to the following recipients on April 2nd, 2026

Dear Governor Ferguson, Speaker Jinkins, Senator Trudeau, Senator Nobles, Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, Representative Fey, and the Washington State Department of Commerce,

On behalf of the Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center (TUPAC), I would like to extend our deepest gratitude for awarding our organization the grant to acquire a permanent home for the arts in the Hilltop community. Your support represented not only an investment in our organization, but a commitment to providing a state-of-the-art dance studio and performance space that would serve as a much-needed gathering place for a community that has long been without one.

We were honored by your trust and inspired by the opportunity to create a lasting cultural anchor for Hilltop.

However, just prior to receiving the award, Tacoma Housing Authority withdrew our Memorandum of Understanding for the space we had been actively developing since 2022 in collaboration with architectural and engineering teams. This unexpected loss of site control significantly disrupted our plans.

Shortly after Governor Ferguson signed the 2026 budget, our organization experienced internal dissension within our Board of Directors and several staff members, followed by a devastating cyber incident in which our files, emails, and computer systems were compromised. During this time, our SAW, SAM, and other government accounts were accessed by individuals who fraudulently used my Social Security number and email accounts to remove my name and replace it with another individual, while also impersonating me in official communications.

These events prevented us from delivering summer 2025 programming for the children of Hilltop and caused a profound loss of trust within the community we have served for the past seven years.

Over the past year, we have worked diligently to restore our systems, rebuild our digital presence, and resume programming. Despite these efforts, we have found it extremely difficult to regain the level of stability and high-quality arts education that has defined our work.

It is with a heavy heart that we must request to be released from this generous grant award. After careful consideration, we have concluded that the cumulative challenges we have faced make it unsustainable for us to continue serving the Hilltop community beyond December 31, 2026.

This decision comes with deep sadness. We will greatly miss being an active part of the Hilltop community. We remain proud of the programming we have provided since 2017 and hope that we were able to spark creativity, joy, and a lasting interest in the performing arts for the children and families we served.

We are sincerely grateful for the opportunities, trust, and support you have extended to our organization. It has been an honor to work in partnership with leaders who believe in the power of the arts to transform communities.

With appreciation,

Klair Ethridge

Executive Director

T.U.P.A.C.

PO Box 1174

Tacoma WA 98401

(studio) 253-327-1873 (mobile) 323-828-5955

MORE TO COME...

Fairwell

Dear TUPAC Students, Families, Staff, and Supporters,

It is with very heavy hearts that we share that TUPAC will officially cease our regularly scheduled classes, and formal instruction on June 30, 2026.

For the remainder of the year, our focus will shift toward responsibly rehoming and gifting the bounty of arts related materials we have acquired over the years to local arts-based nonprofit organizations, particularly those serving marginalized communities. This includes costumes, stage sets, dance shoes, ballet barres, flooring, dancewear, lighting & audio equipment, art works and instructional materials that helped build our programs and serve our students and Tacoma throughout the years. We hope these resources will continue fostering creativity, artistic expression, community, mentorship, and artistic opportunities beyond TUPAC.

While we hope to donate as much as possible within the arts community, some assets will need to be sold in order to help satisfy debts incurred during this extraordinarily difficult period.

As many of you know, the cybercrime we experienced in July 2025 created devastating operational and financial challenges for our organization. In the aftermath, an accompanying campaign of misinformation orchestrated by bad actors caused tremendous harm to our reputation and made it increasingly difficult to attract and retain students despite our continued commitment to providing artistic excellence and exceptional instruction.

Over the past year, nearly all of our time, energy, and resources have gone toward recovering records, rebuilding systems, addressing compromised infrastructure, and attempting to repair damage caused by stolen and corrupted data, and working with authorities to (hopefully very soon) bring the cyber criminals to justice. The reality is that the work required to survive the aftermath ultimately pulled us away from the creative and educational mission that has always been at the heart of TUPAC.

I also want to share personally why I have been largely absent over the past several weeks.

Earlier this year, the heartbreaking death of one of our beautiful young students brought on a sadness I could never have imagined. Then a few weeks ago, I fractured a rib. Shortly afterward, my brother, my closest confidant, passed away unexpectedly, requiring me to travel to New York to handle his final arrangements. Upon returning home, I learned that the CT scan performed during my ER visit revealed several serious health concerns that now require immediate ongoing medical attention. The weight of these losses finally caught up with me in ways I was no longer able to push through. For the first time in my life, there were many days when I simply did not have the will to get out of bed.

Combined with the immense strain of the past year, we have reached the painful conclusion that it is time to close this chapter.

This decision was not made lightly.

Since opening our doors on July 10, 2017, we have been profoundly proud of what we built together. What began as a dream became a community rooted in discipline, creativity, inclusion, cultural expression, and love for the arts. Watching our students grow, not only as artists, but as human beings, has been one of the greatest honors of our lives.

We are deeply grateful to every student who walked through our doors, every family who trusted us, every staff member who poured their heart into this work with sharing their artistry and just as importantly their integrity and every supporter who believed in the importance of accessible arts education. Your kindness, encouragement, and belief carried us through so many beautiful years, and we will forever cherish the community we created together.

While this ending is painful, we remain proud of what TUPAC represented and the lives it touched over the past nine years. We hope the spirit of creativity, resilience, discipline, and community that defined TUPAC continues to live on in each of you.

Additional information regarding transition resources, referrals, remaining programming opportunities, and community partnerships will be shared in the coming weeks.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for allowing us to be part of your journey.

Peace,

Klair Ethridge
Executive Director

TUPAC

Our Mission

TUPAC’s mission was to provide Tacoma’s youth—especially those from underrepresented communities in the Historic Hilltop—with opportunities to achieve artistic excellence. We did this through culturally relevant pre-professional dance and theatre training, engaging community events, and other arts experiences.

We were committed to supporting our students through mentorship from local, national, and international artists, fostering their personal growth, and encouraging them to give back to the community.

Land & Community Acknowledgment

ʔi čəd ʔal tiił dxʷləšucid ʔaciɫtalbixʷ.
We stand on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples.

Our Performing Arts Center occupies the traditional homelands of the Puyallup Tribe. We state this plainly: this land was not freely ceded. It was taken through colonization, displacement, and policies designed to dismantle Indigenous sovereignty, culture, and lifeways. Yet the Puyallup people and other Coast Salish nations endure. Their governance, culture, language, and stewardship of these lands and waters continue.

To acknowledge the land is not symbolic. It is a commitment to confront the history of occupation, to reject erasure, and to support Indigenous self-determination today.

We also acknowledge that this neighborhood, Hilltop was shaped by Black American families who built community, business, and cultural life here during an era of redlining, segregation, and exclusion. This area was subjected to racist labeling by white residents, yet Black leaders and families transformed it into a center of strength, creativity, and advocacy. Their legacy is foundational to this community.

We recognize that the histories of Indigenous dispossession and anti-Black racism are not past tense. They continue to shape systems, opportunity, and access.

As an organization, we commit not only to acknowledgment, but to action, to equity in practice, to representation in leadership, and to ensuring that our space reflects accountability to the peoples whose histories make our presence possible.

Mon	By Appointment
Tue	By Appointment
Wed	By Appointment
Thu	By Appointment
Fri	By Appointment
Sat	By Appointment
Sun	By Appointment

Requiem for a Nonprofit

OFFICIAL STATEMENT REGARDING T.U.P.A.C. AND MO MOTION DANCE SCHOOL