By Rachel Howard May 28, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)
Shanan Liu, left, and Chibueze Crouch during rehearsals on the set of “Towards Opulence, the Opera,” which features songs and dances derived from their personal writings and stories in San Francisco, on May 20.Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
News headlines tell one story of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, painting a picture of a seedy enclave overrun with sidewalk tent encampments, crime and fentanyl where, on average, two people a day die from overdoses. But walk into Dance Mission Theater for a Skywatchers rehearsal and you’d hear a very different story, delivered by the Tenderloin’s own residents.
“We are a powerful people,” the two-dozen Skywatchers cast members sang in rich unison during a recent rehearsal for the group’s next production, “Towards Opulence, the Opera,” slated to open at Dance Mission on Friday, May 31.
When the chorus quieted on this Monday afternoon, lead artist Shakiri stepped in, rearranging the ensemble, whose members are Black, white and Asian, and dressed in everything from purple yoga pants to a pirate hat.
“Take space when you’ve got something to say, and give space when someone else has something to say,” Shakiri said, as Skywatchers founder Anne Bluethenthal showed Lauren Swiger how to sweep up her castmate Lotus Miller and carry her lovingly across the stage.
“See it as a dance,” Bluethenthal added, crouching and lifting Miller’s trusting body. “This is part of the dance.”
There’s a lot of embracing at a Skywatchers gathering, both in rehearsal and after, but there’s ample fierce defiance too. Performers deliver lines like, “I call bull—, ” calling out gaslighters who deny what the show calls “the root system of our essential opulence.”
“We’re walking a line, not running away from what is difficult, but also not exploiting or pandering or presenting all the images of the Tenderloin people are used to seeing,” Bluethenthal told the Chronicle after rehearsal. “Without denying the conditions of life in the Tenderloin, ‘Towards Opulence’ is an act of resistance because we’re imagining our richest lives.”
As cast member Dorian Brockington put it, just before catching a bus back to his Tenderloin apartment: “There’s a beautiful light in the Tenderloin if you open your eyes to see it.”
Bluethenthal learned this firsthand by spending more than a dozen years immersed in the downtown neighborhood. She founded Skywatchers in 2011, driven by “an existential crisis” about her three decades of making dance on political themes.
“The people who were most directly affected by the subjects I was passionate about — those people weren’t author to the work, they weren’t performing the work and they weren’t witnessing the work,” Bluethenthal said.
Searching for a sustainable combination of political art and community, Bluethenthal visited the Tenderloin National Forest, a former so-called crack alley on the 500 block of Ellis Street that was turned into a green space in 1989 and is anchored by a redwood now six-stories tall. As she began meeting neighborhood residents, the richness of their stories compelled her to keep returning. One such resident of the Senator Hotel told Bluethenthal, “I’m a skywatcher because I live on the top floor, I look out my window and I see the children.” That’s how the budding theater community got its name.
More Information
“Towards Opulence, the Opera”: Skywatchers. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, May 31-June 1, and 5 p.m. Sunday, June 2. $20-$100, sliding scale. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., S.F. www.dancemissiontheater.org
The first Skywatchers performance used recorded interviews as a soundtrack, with residents of the SROs dancing alongside. After that show, weekly Skywatchers meetings spread from one SRO to another, with the group’s circle now held at the Kelly Cullen Community Center.
Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Skywatchers has produced or collaborated on more than 20 works, including 2017’s “I Got a Truth to Tell” and 2019’s “Came Here to Live: Resilience and Resistance in the Containment Zone.”
In October 2019, Joel Yates walked into the circle, while recovering from renal failure. Staying sober “was just really isolating,” he recalled. His first entrance to the group was intimidating, but “then they opened up with freewriting, and that was my comfort level.” Eventually, Yates became one of the group’s six lead artists, a paid position. (All cast members are also paid hourly for rehearsal and performance time.)
A committed father and passionate poet, Yates styled himself as “The Eternal Elegist” for the series of self-portraits titled “Towards Opulence” that led to this opera, with his life-size photo adorning a Muni bus terminal. His voice rings clear and strong as he sings “We are truth tellers, we are love warriors” at the show’s close.
Dennis McCauley’s voice may be fainter, but his testimony to the group’s power is no less striking. A resident of the Tenderloin for 10 years, he joined Skywatchers two years ago when a longtime member brought him in.
“I wanted to be around positive people, positive energy,” McCauley said, noting that he was homeless for three and a half years. “I was on drugs, and now I’m clean and sober because of Skywatchers.”
Lead songwriter Melanie DeMore said she knows that “Skywatchers is a lifeline for many of our members.” An original member of Linda Tillery’s legendary Cultural Heritage Choir, DeMore travels the country leading workshops at universities, but when she’s home in the Bay Area, she spends Tuesdays in the Tenderloin.
“We ask the community members, ‘How would you like to be known, and how would you like to be seen and heard?’ ” DeMore said. “My job is to help them put that into the song only they can write. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be true.”
Rachel Howard is a freelance writer.
