Outdoor Sculpture Unveiling & Aerial Dance Performance | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Caruso’s Dream, a new permanent site-specific sculpture commissioned by Avalon Bay for its new 17-story high rise on 55 Ninth Street, will be unveiled with an outdoor music and aerial dance performance at 55 Ninth Street in San Francisco.

At 6 pm, you’ll hear from the artists, Avalon Bay representatives, and possibly Mayor Ed Lee (he’s been invited). At 6:20 pm, there will be a choreographed unveiling performance with musicians, singers, performers, and aerialists ending with the illumination of the artwork.

Ninth Street will be closed from Market St. to Mission St. for the performance. All are invited. Bring a mask and a FM radio. For the adventurous: wear early 1900s attire. This is happening is outdoors; dress accordingly.

Artists: Brian Goggin with Dorka Keehn
Conductor: Mauro ffortissimo
Performers: Zoltan DiBartolo, Michelle Jasso and Mark Nasser
Aerial Choreographer: Karl Gillick
With a musical world premiere of Il Sogno ad Occhi Aperti di Enrico Caruso by Veronika Krausas

Hovering over the sidewalk, a canopy of topsy-turvy glass and steel upright, baby grand and grand pianos are held aloft in the eves along the building’s frontage. Visitors unwittingly enter into Caruso’s Dream. During the day, the pianos magically glimmer and sparkle as rays of natural light shine through the pianos and are refracted, creating both brilliant and diffused effects and patterns. From dusk until dawn, warm light will emanate from the pianos pulsing and undulating to the rhythms and syncopations of Enrico Caruso’s operatic recordings. 

Why Caruso’s Dream? After singing Carmen in San Francisco, the loved tenor Enrico Caruso woke the next morning in his room at the Palace Hotel to the fantastic shaking of the 1906 Earthquake. “But what an awakening!” he was quoted in the newspaper, “…feeling my bed rocking as though I am on a ship in the ocean, and for a moment I think I am dreaming.”  This artwork imagines Caruso’s dream on that fateful night.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.