Grass, Gravel, & the Space Between Trees: Unfolding, Merging, Marking Time is a free, public, site-responsive movement installation, or “dancescape,” integrated into the urban landscape of the Music Concourse, and presented by Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works, in collaboration with San Francisco Recreation & Parks.

2025 marks the fifth anniversary of the COVID pandemic, when we found ourselves compelled to create and perform outdoors and informally, over many months, in Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse, as a ritual; a non-digital archive; and a social experiment in intimate distance, solidarity care, and the sharing of public space.

We return to the Music Concourse five years later with Grass, Gravel, & the Space Between Trees, to explore the possibilities, at this juncture, of cumulative, ongoing, and sustainable art practices, with a different set of boundaries and desires around collective intimacy, grief, embodied ecologies of place, the public gaze, and the intersection (both disruptive and harmonious) of art and urban landscapes.

Concept and Direction: Jennifer Perfilio

Performance + Co-Creation: Shareen DeRyan, Irene Hsi, Chinchin Hsu, Maya Mohsin, Phoenicia Pettyjohn, and ainsley e. tharp. Original text written and performed by Chinchin Hsu, Maya Mohsin, & Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Original Sound Score + Performance: Clark Buckner

Video: Jacob Marks Productions

Photo Credit: Hillary Goidell