World Premiere!
Bay Area choreographer Erika Chong Shuch returns to YBCA with After All, Part I: a rapid-fire series of three-minute plays, songs, dances and “moments” based on perceptions of our future. Commissioned by YBCA as part of Bay Area Now 5, this is performance for a television generation—short, punchy fragments–from a young choreographer with flawless instincts for theater. Shuch collaborates with a host of Bay Area luminaries, including dancer/choreographer Joe Goode; Campo Santo co-founder Sean San Jose; playwrights Michelle Carter, Octavio Solis and Philip Kan Gotanda; and percussionist Matthias Bossi, as well as Jennifer Chien, Melanie Elms, Allen Willner, Dwayne Calizo and Daveen DiGiacomo.After All, Part 1 was originally conceived as part of a larger project with Intersection for the Arts, where Erika Chong Shuch and the ESP Project have been in residence since 2004. Development with Intersection is supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission/Cultural Equity Initiative. Please go to theintersection.org for further information.
80 minutes / no intermission
Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project
a confession: A highlight of my suburban upbringing was organizing funerals of neighborhood pets. I would put the dead hamster, cat, or goldfish into a shoebox, and place it onto gauzy fabric overflowing from my radio flyer wagon. I would then lead a procession of solemn children to the animal graveyard in my backyard, where I would deliver a passionate sermon. I love funerals.
In setting out to create After All, a collection of vignettes inspired by various perceptions of the future, we originally believed we would generate a collection of works about melting icebergs, plastic bag islands, and the search for hope. As we currently work towards actualizing this new work, we realize that contemplating the future inspires a remarkable and acute interest in the tiny details of the present moment. Contemplating the future also invites the overwhelming and romantic awareness of inevitable endings. From where we sit today, After All is an exercise in trusting and following the images that come when we contemplate the unfathomable. We are following crumbs in the dark. We do not know where we are headed. Into the future, I suppose. Hope to see you there.
—E. C. S.
After All came about because of conversations happening at Intersection. We were grappling with questions of fate, inevitability, and hope. This piece will flow into an ambitious interdisciplinary performance by ESP Project and Campo Santo, premiering at Intersection sometime in a future we can only imagine.
—Deborah Cullinan, Executive Director, Intersection for the Arts
Erika Chong Shuch is a choreographer whose work melds theater, dance, music, video, and design to formulate original performance works with her company, The ESP Project, a resident company at Intersection for the Arts. A recipient of the Gerbode Foundation’s Emerging Choreographers Award and SF Bay Guardian’s Goldie Award, Shuch has been inspired by topics such as cannibalism, incarceration, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Each new work is an interdisciplinary investigation into a specific topic, amplifying the extraordinary within ordinary human experience. Shuch’s work has been supported by organizations such as Headlands Center for the Arts, Center for Cultural Innovation, Irvine Foundation, Djerassi Foundation, Zellerbach Family Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, and CHIME.