Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture Launches New Program Series:

Points of Departure

“Fort Mason Center has always been a place where San Francisco’s past, present, and future converge, and Points of Departure captures that spirit,” said Mike Buhler, FMCAC President & CEO. “These are the stories of organizations and artists who have defined this campus and this city, and we are excited to share them with our community as we build toward our 50th anniversary.”“Fort Mason Center has always been a place where San Francisco’s past, present, and future converge, and Points of Departure captures that spirit,” said Mike Buhler, FMCAC President & CEO. “These are the stories of organizations and artists who have defined this campus and this city, and we are excited to share them with our community as we build toward our 50th anniversary.”

PLEASE. STAY. TOUCH. Jess Curtis Experiments with Gravity | June 20 - August 15, 2026

The Store House, Landmark Building D, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC), and GRAVITY are pleased to announce their joint presentation of PLEASE. STAY. TOUCH. Jess Curtis Experiments with Gravity, a new exhibition opening in The Store House on June 20, 2026, that honors the life and practice of Jess Curtis (1962–2024), the pioneering experimental choreographer who spent four decades centering disabled, blind and low vision, queer, and marginalized artists in his work.

Part memorial exhibition, part living laboratory, PLEASE. STAY. TOUCH. transforms Curtis's complete archive into a participatory environment built on the questions that animated his career: What happens when we pay attention? When we touch? When we are touched? When we see and allow ourselves to be witnessed?

Curtis emerged from San Francisco's radical 1980s and 1990s dance scene, including the collectives Contraband, CORE, and 848 Divisadero Community Space, before founding Jess Curtis/Gravity in 2000. For more than two decades, he worked with performers between San Francisco and Berlin, earning recognition as a contemporary dance leader on the West Coast and internationally while building a community defined by mutual support, mentorship, and sustained collaboration.

Exhibition Highlights

Curated by Seth Eisen and LisaRuth Elliott, the exhibition is organized around the central tension of Curtis' absence and the radical presence his practice demands. His recorded voice guides visitors throughout the galleries, threading the archive together. Materials spanning 40 years, including never-before-seen photographs, personal writings, and audiovisual documentation, offer an intimate account of his intellectual and artistic development. Because Curtis spent his career investigating what it means to be present in a body, the exhibition asks visitors to participate rather than observe.

In the center of the gallery, a large tactile and interactive mural designed by Hugh D'Andrade and fabricated by Terrance Graven using images Seth Eisen selected from archive traces the breadth of Curtis's career. Windows into his major works invite multi-sensory encounters with aerial equipment, props, video, audio, and touchable objects.

A recreation of the kitchen at 848 Community Space, the legendary live/work space co-founded by Curtis, Keith Hennessy, and Michael Whitson, which gave rise to the now-thriving CounterPulse, resurfaces as a communal gathering point for conversation and archival browsing.

Beyond Gravity, a dedicated film room, showcases dance films by artists mentored by Curtis. Essays by scholars Ann Cooper Albright, Gerald Pirner, and Thomas F. DeFrantz explore his dance lineage, his commitment to expanding who dances and how, and the body as the center of sensation and growth.

An Activation Stage led by artists-in-residence hosts new movement works, contact improvisation jams, screenings, and community conversations throughout the summer. Three Activation Programmers, Maria Silk, Abby Crain, and jose e. abad, serve as curator-facilitator-performers, each extending Curtis's commitment to inclusive, innovative performance practice and embodied presence.

PLEASE. STAY. TOUCH. is also a portrait of the international web of artists, activists, thinkers, circus makers, disabled performers, and scientists who made Curtis's work possible. His earliest dance mentors, Sara Shelton Mann, Lucas Hoving, Anna Halprin, and Remy Charlip, are present throughout. The co-founders of CORE, including Keith Hennessy, Stephanie Maher, Jules Beckman, and Stanya Kahn, are visible alongside long-term creative partners Maria Francesca Scaroni, Claire Cunningham, and Jörg Müller. Those carrying GRAVITY into its next iteration: Rachael Dichter, Gabriele Christian, Rebecca Fitton, Aiano Nakagawa, Tiffany Taylor, and Maia Scott, are prominent.

“Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture has long been a home for dance,” said Frank Smigiel, Chief Curator, FMCAC. “In our first decade, Anna Halprin’s Dancer’s Workshop had offices and studios here, offering weekly classes for expert practitioners and everyday movers. And in the last ten years, the Fort Mason Art program has commissioned new work from Kim Ip, Sara Shelton Mann, and RUPTURE, among others, while hosting Zaccho Dance Theater’s San Francisco Aerial Art Festival.

We are honored to extend this movement platform with PLEASE. STAY. TOUCH., an exhibition that shows both Jess Curtis’ immersion within Bay Area dance histories and his expansion of the participants, vocabulary, and global reach of these legacies. As we move to celebrate our 50th anniversary as a nonprofit art campus in 2027, we’re particularly pleased to spotlight Jess Curtis’ commitment to a generous art practice: one where stages offer invitations, ideas, and takeaways for our daily lives.”

Accessibility as Aesthetic Philosophy

Audio description, use of Braille, tactile walking surfaces, and other interpretive haptic tools are embedded into the exhibition from the ground up. Fully Tactile SF and accessibility consultants Maia Scott and Tiffany Taylor are integrated into the production team. Accessibility here is not supplemental; it is the exhibition's aesthetic philosophy made spatial, an expression of Curtis's lifelong commitment to an accessible future for all.

Gabriele Christian, Co-Director of GRAVITY, said: “We must hold fast to mentors, hold space for vanishing artist communities, and hold body-based performance as a technology to prevent siloing, displacement, and cultural erosion.”