Founded in 1984, Anne Bluethenthal’s ABD PRODUCTIONS has, for four decades, been committed to inspiring social change through the arts. The women- and queer-centered multi-ethnic company based in San Francisco produced new dance works created in collaboration with diverse communities. Growing from deep investigations into the language of movement, the resulting dance works were eloquent, bold, and subversive acts of art.
In 2010 Bluethenthal felt drawn to create art in collaboration with—of, by, and for—the community members directly impacted by the subject of the work. What began as a single conversation in the tenant lounge of San Francisco's historic Senator Hotel (a Tenderloin supportive housing residence) about living conditions within, has grown over fourteen years into an enduring, relational, community-driven collaborative performing arts ensemble called SKYWATCHERS.
Each year Skywatchers co-creates site-specific, multidisciplinary artworks that center and uplift the lives, histories, and urgent concerns of the residents of the TL. We have built and sustain collaborations with over a dozen neighborhood partners, envisioned and built a health equity partnership with both UCSF, California’s largest medical school, and the Department of Public Health, and continue to position the arts as integral to equitable social change in San Francisco. In our 14th year, Skywatchers continues to make work that addresses the slow violences of poverty and structural disenfranchisement, mass incarceration and the war on drugs, the climate crisis and clean water, and revolutionary acts of community survival.
As we move into 2025, we honor our roots as a program of ABD Productions, and celebrate our emergent leadership! Founder Anne Bluethenthal will assume a role as a Lead Artist Emeritus, stepping back as Tenderloin-based ensemble members step forward in a distributed, community-driven leadership model. This has been a long term, deliberate transition process. With the aim of being held within the Tenderloin, we’ve worked diligently to mentor community leadership, to nourish active engagement in every aspect of the work, and to make the structural changes necessary for a new generation of community leaders to successfully sustain our organization well into the future. Learn more about the herstory of ABD Productions, by visiting our new archival site HERE.
"Together, Skywatchers is co-creating work that at once celebrates our shared humanity and speaks directly to the most profound ruptures of our society. We position our work strategically in the public domain and the civic discourse with a shared commitment to addressing structural inequity.
We are learning every day to collaborate in ways that are beautiful, rigorous, powerful, and true to community concerns and urgencies."
