Precarious: Labor History Walking Tour & Dance Performance

June 1-3, 8 PM (Performances) & June 2-3, 4:30 PM (Walking Tours)

Hope Mohr Dance (HMD) announces the premiere of Precarious, June 1-3, co-produced by CounterPulse and in collaboration with Shaping SF Walking Tours.

Klockar's Blacksmith shop was the last of its kind in San Francisco. Blacksmith Tony Rossellini worked for forty-five years in this small wooden building surrounded by skyscrapers. So did visual artist Tracy Taylor Grubbs, who used the building's second floor as her studio. So did choreographer Hope Mohr, who had a longstanding improvisation practice with Grubbs on site.

All that changed in November 2016. The day after the election, Grubbs and Mohr learned that the building would be converted into a cannabis dispensary. Grubbs has been evicted.

Grubbs' dislocation is not unique. A recent San Francisco Arts Commission survey of nearly 600 artists in San Francisco found that over 70 percent had been or were being displaced from their workplace, home, or both.

In response, choreographer Mohr is creating Precarious, a walking tour and dance performance that begins on the sidewalk in front of 443 Folsom and ends at CounterPulse. The first part of the event is a labor history walking tour created in collaboration with the public historians at Shaping SF Walking Tours. The second part of the event will be a performance at CounterPulse, a former adult movie theater turned cultural hub in the Tenderloin. Mohr's ghostly dance will explore the vulnerability of the moving body in a changing environment.

Mohr's Precarious marks the ten-year anniversary of Hope Mohr Dance. San Francisco's gentrification boom threatens the city's identity as a progressive, inclusive city. "In this environment, I feel an acute responsibility to be both artist and advocate," Artistic Director Mohr states. "Precarious will give audiences the chance to remember the history of working bodies in San Francisco's and to witness the cultural vitality so key to the city's future."

$20-$35.