This Friday, the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, a resident performance company at Intersection for the Arts, will swoop into the City Hall rotunda for a 30-minute free lunchtime site-specific performance of Love Everywhere followed by two days of complementary, informal performances. Feel free to bop your heads and explore what is love, but there’s no Haddaway in sight.
What: Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project’s Love Everywhere
When/Where:
- Friday, February 12, Noon, City Hall Rotunda
- Saturday, February 13, afternoon, along Market Street
- Sunday, February 14 at 9AM and 11AM at Glide Memorial Church
Tickets: Free
Dancers’ Group’s ONSITE Program commissioned Erika Chong Shuch to create a work specifically for the Civic Center area, and after walking the ‘hood, she knew that she wanted to focus on the recent attention to marriage equality. To pull off something this large-scale, she appealed to fellow choreographers, as well as the general public, Dancers’ Group, and other past contacts to reign in all the bodies, including over 60 dancers, non-dancers, and musicians, that will make up these performances. In addition, Chong Shuch collected real-life stories and photographs from the public, which will add some personal touches.
Chong Shuch says, “I feel like [Love Everywhere] is just a really special thing. You know, this is the six-year anniversary of when they started issuing the same sex marriage licenses, so this piece is… really joyful and very much a celebration of those marriages, like a Valentine’s Day celebration of love in this huge public space where so many people have been married. For Friday, I think it’s going to be really fun…, and I hope that the performance will bring to the forefront this whole marriage equality issue without being political about it. I hope we can put some pictures and images out there in the world that bring life to that issue. “
Photo credit: Jennifer Chien and Erin Mei-Ling Stuart perform in Love Everywhere by the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project. Photo by Pak Han.
About the short performance window, Chong Shuch remarks, “With the site specific work, it’s so different. Normally we do a show in a theater and we can run for weeks, but with this, we can’t ask City Hall for more than one opportunity to perform there, so we’re really just trying to make the most of this one weekend of events, specifically with the City Hall show. It’s such a gift that we’re able to be in that space. It’s such an important, historical building that holds so many stories within its walls. It’s more ephemeral than I’m used to.”
Chong Shuch says this Friday’s event at City Hall is the “most special,” and it’s a 30-minute, one-time only dealio. After Friday’s event, there will be two waves of follow-up performances. On Saturday, Love Everywhere continues throughout the downtown area. To add some impromtu-ness, there won’t be a schedule of these released ahead of time. Chong Shuch says that she wants these installation-like performances to “creak out of nowhere… We’re doing a bunch of stuff up and down Market Street. In crosswalks and things like this. I think it’ll kind of depend on how the flow of traffic is. We don’t know exactly where we’ll be; we’ll need to be a little more flexible with our plans!” So if you see people boogieing at the UN Plaza or tossing bouquets along a Muni stop, give them a little support; it’s all in the name of love! In addition, a smaller ensemble will present excerpts of the larger piece at Glide Memorial Church’s Sunday Celebrations on V-Day. That’s Valentine’s Day for all you fans of the Visitors or Sunday for the single, calendar-oriented folk.
All of this weekend’s Love Everywhere performances are free.
To give you a taste, below is a 2008 video Interview with Erika Chong Shuch as she prepares After All, Part I.
