Photography has advanced significantly since Kim Epifano created San Francisco Trolley Dances, a free tour in which passengers hop on historic Muni streetcars to watch Bay Area troupes doing site-specific routines at specially selected stops. Only a few passengers had cameras in 2004 when it started, but by last year’s iteration, both attendees and casual gawkers had high-definition video smartphones in their hands.
During that time, Epifano and her Epiphany Dance Theater colleagues also collected pictures. They filmed so much; it would be a shame not to share it.
“With 20 years of archival footage from so many amazing dance companies across so many sites in different neighborhoods all over San Francisco, it just made sense to bring it all together in one film,” says Epifano.
Produced in collaboration with Loren Robertson Productions, “Dancing with Muni” screens Oct. 19 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in a free event that has reached capacity. Combining new interviews with archival footage, it illustrates just how Epifano, Epiphany Dance and numerous collaborators showcased their art as patrons crisscrossed the city on different Muni routes. The documentary touches on the history of San Francisco’s public transit system as well as details the bureaucratic hoops Epifano had to leap through to commandeer official Muni vehicles every year.
How did everything fit into one film?
“There are so many highlights, it’s always hard to choose!” Epifano says, describing editing countless hours of footage. “The memories it brings back and how much physicality has gone out by the dancers and choreographers! It is not an easy feat to dance with full bodies on unpredictable surfaces and weather!”
She pondered San Francisco’s history and her personal connection to it. She says, “…. I spent a lot of time in Chinatown and North Beach as a young artist. The Mission district was also a home base. The Bayview always felt important as people do not always take the T-line to that area. In 2021, my site at the Natoma Cabana was spectacular. I felt so inspired by the place and the dancers. I believe the piece was a gem in a place where the new San Francisco and old San Francisco collide.”
But “Dancing with Muni” also is Trolley Dances’ swan song. On the event’s 20th anniversary last year, Epifano said the evolution of her troupe Epiphany Dance was “still yet to be seen.” But she decided to cease its flagship production. Instead of the classic Muni tour, this year’s film screening will close the book for good on Trolley Dances. After the movie, there will be a dance party and a “Flee for Free” giveaway of costumes, props and miscellaneous items collected over two decades.
For Epifanio, ending Trolley Dances was a bittersweet necessity.
“I have worked so hard for so many years as an artist all over the world,” she says. “San Francisco Trolley Dances is just one of the many projects. The energy and sheer amount of physical ground covered while curating, organizing and creating a piece is huge. I still have a lot of artistic juice left and realized after last year that I want to refocus my energy and bring it back to me. This will allow me to go out again with renewed energy and create more art of substance.”
Although the popular program is ending, Epifano says it doesn’t represent another independent arts organization shutting its doors for good in ever-expensive San Francisco.
“San Francisco will always be a creatively vital place,” she insists. “It is deep in the bones of the city.”
Asked how she gets artistic fulfillment, Epifano says, “I love to work with artists that I can truly put artistic questions to and we discover what that is together through dance, music, theater and visual arts. I love so many forms of art. It can be walking in the woods or hearing music or going to an archeological museum. You never know what triggers someone to be inspired to make art, whether it be joy, grief, politics, human nature, history, the environment and beyond.”
That same optimism extends to her reflections on the project and the lasting friendships she made in the past two decades. Spun off from an original version in San Diego, San Francisco Trolley Dances began after the first dot-com bubble-burst, weathered the 2008 financial crisis and survived through international events including the pandemic.
Through it all, Epifano hopes the film cements Trolley Dances’ legacy as a love letter to its host city.
“I have learned so much about a complicated, exquisite city that is loved throughout the world,” she explains. “… San Francisco Trolley Dances brings life and joy to its very streets and people. People will remember and think about all they have seen over the years, [as well as] the importance of performing arts that move people to be a part of their communities and dig deep into themselves, to find what is important in the world. How transportation is the vein of the city and to appreciate the art of making a city move every day and how much work that entails for all the people at Muni.”
“Dancing with Muni” screens at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 19 at The Forum at YBCA, 701 Mission St., San Francisco. For more information, visit epiphanydance.org.
Charles Lewis III is a San Francisco-born journalist and performing artist. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED and San Francisco Examiner. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man’s Idiot.wordpress.com.
The post San Francisco Trolley Dances concludes with commemorative documentary appeared first on Local News Matters.