Outdoor Performances:
5:30pm May 14 & 15 | Performance at Civic Center Plaza, outside City Hall
2:00pm May 16 | Matinee at 24th and Mission BART

**NOTE: All events will have ASL interpretation and honor COVID-safe protocols.

For Skywatchers’ 10th Anniversary Season, ABD/Skywatchers, in partnership with Dance Mission Theater and Cutting Ball Theater, presents From Containment To Expansion, a multidisciplinary performance piece created in collaboration with Melanie Demore. From Containment to Expansion weaves story and song with Gullah stick pounding, a rhythmic language of resistance and celebration. Drawing on liberatory movements from the Gullah people of the Carolina lowlands to the current Movement for Black Lives, and centering the stories and talents of Tenderloin residents and Skywatchers ensemble members, From Containment To Expansion integrates processional, dance, music, and spoken word, and features an original score by internationally recognized choral director, and vocal activist Melanie DeMore.

The Tenderloin neighborhood of SF is commonly referred to as a containment zone for the decades of civic neglect and marginalization to which its poor, unhoused, often Black and Brown, residents have been subjected. Moving from our city’s defacto containment zone into a zone of shared liberation, this work heralds a future in which we celebrate, illuminate, and amplify what is powerful and unique in our most disinvested neighborhood. 

We cannot and will NOT be contained!

MORE: Rev. Marvin K. White on From Containment to Expansion in InDance, May 2021