After a challenging yet highly rewarding design process, Lightswitch lit dancers as they explored the iconic architecture of San Francisco’s City Hall. Projection mapping, lighting, and rigging design were used to achieve a temporary visual intervention, striving to tackle how the narrative of classical architecture can be decolonized in civic spaces.
Created by choreographer Joanna Haigood, this site-specific dance piece transformed San Francisco City Hall’s iconic rotunda into an immersive, video-mapped exploration of equity in civic spaces. By confronting the white-centric beaux-arts style head on, the piece introduced the possibility of inclusion for the diverse residents of San Francisco.
Lightswitch teamed up with the video mapping experts at Visual Endeavors to light the dancers as they interacted with the building itself, ultimately asking the question: how do we make architecture inclusive?
Because of the importance of video content in this piece, our role as lighting designers was delicate. We had to showcase the dancers as they interacted with the architecture, often at great distances, without overwhelming the projections with light. From starry skies to San Francisco’s catastrophic 1906 earthquake and fire, we aligned our design choices with the video content to create cohesive visual experiences.
The public nature of City Hall resulted in us treating this temporary installation like a touring production. All equipment was loaded out every night, then reinstalled before showtime the following day. Additionally, very little storage space was available, requiring us to work closely with our rental partner for this piece, 4Wall Entertainment, to ensure the smallest possible size for everything we used.
Despite this project’s ample challenges – from its compressed timeline to its public location – our team overcame all difficulties by balancing creativity, logistics, and finances. By utilizing a strategic mix of versatile, powerful fixtures, we achieved the flexibility of design necessary to light such an ambitious show.
The biggest reason this project worked was the team’s commitment to the art and to each other. Every department cooperated and compromised to bring this moving installation to life. It was an incredible gift and honor to collaborate with Zaccho Dance Theatre, to provide this stunning work free to the community. The People’s Palace digs deep into our ongoing societal issues, seeking to rectify them through art and compassion
photography by Walter Kitundu
