This should be very interesting.
Dear SFHS Members and Friends,
A quick important note. Instead of next month's History Live! being on its usual second Tuesday of the month, the show has moved a week early to Tuesday, April 1st.
Next month's History Live! show, "Shaping San Francisco’s Urban Design: Anna and Lawrence Halprins’ Artistic Legacy," features Janice Ross, Professor Emerita of the Theatre and Performance Studies Department, Stanford University.
Anna and Lawrence Halprin are the hidden designers of public life in San Francisco. As the Bay Area’s most famous and under-explored artistic couple, this dancer and landscape architect duo transformed the city into a theatrical stage beginning in the rebellious 1960s.
Janice Ross is the author of five books. Her work focuses on the politics of moving bodies. She has researched and written about the Halprins for years. This talk is drawn from her latest book, The Choreography of Environments: How the Anna and Lawrence Halprin Home Transformed Contemporary Dance and Urban Design (Oxford, 2025).
In-person and livestream tickets are free due to those who generously donate at the 'digital ticket' gate. Register for tickets here.
We hope to see you soon!
Todd Mayberry
Executive Director
San Francisco Historical Society
History Live! "Shaping San Francisco’s Urban Design: Anna and Lawrence Halprins’ Artistic Legacy." Tue. April 1 @ 6:30 PM (In-person & Livestream)
Join Janice Ross, Professor Emerita from Stanford University, as she discusses how Anna and Lawrence Halprin transformed contemporary dance and urban design. A free ticket is required. Donations greatly appreciated!
About the Event:
Anna and Lawrence Halprin are the hidden designers of public life in San Francisco. As the Bay Area’s most famous and under-explored artistic couple, this dancer and landscape architect duo transformed the city into a theatrical stage beginning in the rebellious 1960s.
Larry designed signature outdoor spaces that help define the city’s identity, including the Ghirardelli Square adaptive-reuse project, Levi’s Plaza, and Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio. Anna made the city streets her stage, presenting offbeat events like Blank Placard Dance, a 1967 protest performed by dancers carrying blank placards along Market Street, and Hangar, a performance staged by dancers trespass- ing on San Francisco Airport under construction the 1950s. The Halprins were teachers as much as artists. In the 1970s, working from her Divisadero Street studio, Anna built one of the nation’s first racially diverse dance companies. In the early 1980s, she created the first dance groups for HIV-positive men, based at Fort Mason.
Please join us on April 1 to discover how the Halprins’ work continues to choreograph public life in San Francisco.
About Janice Ross:
Janice Ross is Professor Emerita of the Theatre and Performance Studies Deptartment, Stanford University. She is the author of five books, and focuses on the politics of moving bodies. She has researched and written about the Halprins for years. This talk is drawn from her latest book,
The Choreography of Environments: How the Anna and Lawrence Halprin Home Transformed Contemporary Dance and Urban Design (Oxford, 2025), which explores how the architecture of the Halprins’ mid-century modern home in Marin shaped the art they put into the world.
REGISTER HERE:
THE SAN FRANCISCO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Greg