Music, art fests celebrate Bayview
new businesses wanted to promote each other,” says Barbara Gratta, who moved into the neighborhood with her partner in 1999 and started selling wine officially in 2006. “We need to get people down to the Third Street corridor to see what’s happening here. There are businesses that have been around for at least a decade, like Southern Sweets and Auntie April’s Chicken-n-Waffles, and we’ve been developing this great popup food scene.”
While the festival is bringing a healing dose of jazz, blues and funk into the neighborhood, the Zaccho Dance Theatre and the Bayview Opera House are presenting “Picture Bayview Hunters Point,” an interdisciplinary site-specific work that turns the exterior walls of the Opera House into a stage.
With free performances on and around the Opera House on Thursday-Sunday, Oct. 11-14 and 18-21, Zaccho celebrates the community the company has called home for nearly three decades with a multimedia aerial dance work that incorporates the recorded voices of residents talking about their dreams and aspirations.
Conceived and directed by choreographer Joanna Haigood, Zaccho’s founder and artistic director, the elaborate production features projections by video artist Mary Ellen Strom, a score by composer Walter Kitundu, and brief performances by San Francisco soul man Martin Luther McCoy.
“I’m a site artist, and I’m very interested in ‘place,’ in how place is defined and how memories are attached to that,” Haigood says. “We’ve created an elaborate sound score with all these different layers, with voices of the community and sounds from history, from nature and the streets. There’s also video, historic footage of the 1966 uprising and the shipyards. The piece starts on exterior on Third Street, moves inside the hall, and then outside to the back.”
While Haigood settled in Bayview with Zaccho Dance Theatre three decades ago, she was hardly the first artist to find a welcoming space in the area. Hunters Point Shipyard studios have been a hive of activity since 1983, and the public is invited to explore the work being created there during the free Fall Open Studios. More than 170 artists are opening their doors from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 20-21, with another 20 presenting work at the Islais Creek Studios on Oct. 27-28 at the same times.
For Haigood, artists have a special role in changing perceptions of Bayview-Hunters Point as a benighted area best to be avoided.
“This piece isn’t about the darkness,” Haigood says. “It’s actually about the resilience and the fortitude and extraordinary spirit of a group of people who have struggled. It’s not a full picture — I don’t assume I know it all — but it’s a reflection of what I do know, the friendships and deep family ties, and the joys of being connected to a place where meaning is very deep.”