Dance Anywhere

I’ve been following the Dance Anywhere movement for a few years now. And secretly I’ve participated in my living room. And now I’d like to rally some Framer support of the movement. What does it mean? Dance wherever you are on March 22 at 2pm central time. What if everyone, everywhere danced at once? Participate with us! Here’s some more information:

About dance anywhere®
What if there was a public celebration of dance everywhere, around the world, simultaneously? What if, in one moment, the whole world started dancing? Why wait for a performance opportunity to come your way? No audition, no application, no references, no formal dance training needed. Everyone is invited!

dance anywhere® is a simultaneous worldwide public art performance and we want YOU to be the star! For the past 8 years, people of all ages and artistic capacities have made dances in parks, museums, street corners, schools, work places, community centers, offices, and just about anywhere you can imagine. Participants have been professional dancers and artists, plumbers, doctors, soccer players, teachers and politicians. Some dances are choreographed, some are improvised, and some stretch the definition of what dance is.
We hope you will participate on Friday, March 22, 2013 at noon CA, 3pm NY: (click here for your time).

Where will you be?

At work? Taking a lunch break? In class? Running an errand? In line at the bank? The library? The grocery store? Walking the dog in the park?… Perfect! Your participation doesn’t need to be an event you plan months in advance! … Tap your foot, do a little jig, bob your head… You have our permission. And you will be joined by thousands around the world. Get together with your friends, family, colleagues or strangers on the street – wherever you will be – and have some fun!

the mission of dance anywhere®
Build community by engaging people worldwide in a simultaneous, public art, performance

Reconsider the definition of art, public space, and community

Make dance accessible to more people

Inspire creativity

Change perspectives through community art experiences

Artist Beth Fein first created dance anywhere® in 2005 …what if there was a public celebration of dance anywhere and everywhere simultaneously? Why wait for a performance opportunity to come your way? No audition, application, no references, no formal dance training needed. Everyone is invited no matter age or ability.

Beth Fein originally conceived the idea in an effort to acknowledge dance practice (rehearsal, class, etc) as an art form, that formal performances are only a part of dance, that the less observed dance practice is also an art form. As a dancer and visual artist, Fein has continued to develop this original concept to not only blur the line between art practice and art, but to dissolve the line that often separates art and dance from our daily lives. This is dance that transforms our familiar and ordinary locations.
To learn more about Beth Fein and her dance and visual arts practice visit www.bethfein.com.

–Lydia

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Written by Lydia
February 26th, 2013 at 5:57 pm
Posted in Posts

dance anywhere 2013 from Dance Anywhere on Vimeo.

What if there was a public celebration of dance anywhere & everywhere, around the world, simultaneously?

What if, in one moment, the whole world started dancing?

Why wait for a performance opportunity to come your way? No audition, no application, no references, no formal dance training needed. Everyone is invited!

Dance Anywhere® is a simultaneous worldwide public art performance and we want YOU to be the star!

For the past 8 years, people of all ages and artistic capacities have made dances in parks, museums, street corners, schools, work places, community centers and just about anywhere you can imagine. Participants have been professional dancers and artists, plumbers, doctors, soccer players, teachers and politicians. Some dances are choreographed, some are improvised, and some stretch the definition of what dance is.

We hope you will participate on Friday, March 22, 2013 at noon CA, 3pm NY, 8 pm Rome & Paris, etc.

Make yourself an event page on the website & put yourself on the map!

photo: Weidong Yang / dancers: Peter Cheng, Indie Stan

Weidong Yang has a myriad of interests and specialties. To name just a few of his roles, he is a physicist, dancer, choreographer, photographer, and instructor. He is the photographer behind many of dance anywhere’s best photos. Weidong also recently choreographed a piece called “Metal, The Fourth Element,” which he will perform, along with seven other male dancers, on April 29 at Alonzo King LINES Dance Center. This powerful performance explores a male perspective on power, war, justice, and idealism. Weidong incorporates in the choreography for this performance his knowledge of martial arts, Chinese philosophy, Afro-Brazillian and Capoera movement, as well as contemporary and modern dance.

You have studied many different disciplines (dance, photography, physics). How did you become interested in both artistic and scientific fields?

Science and art are not too different to me. People usually think art is about intuition and science is about logic. My experience of doing scientific research is that it takes a great amount of intuition to know the direction and a great amount of technique to walk the path. Very often my intuition reveals to me the answer long before I can bridge a solution to get there. As a researcher, I found myself having never achieved scientific findings on things I was suppose to find. The findings always come at a surprise time and from a surprise place. Later on I had pretty much the same experience with art. I guess it was curiosity that lead me to both science and art.

Do you ever combine or overlap these disciplines? Does your physics background inform your choreography, performance, and photography?

My understanding in the physics of light helped to explore using infrared camera for dance photography. For a while I was working on a interactive video/dance project that involves infrared light source, infrared video camera, and computer coding.

I think my physics training helps me to see and organize the structure of my choreography. My research training helps me to research and develop materials for choreography. I know my approach in art is heavily influenced by my research training. But don’t think I can deliberate it. I think my research experience has taught me: a lot of trial and error, keep an open mind, be very diligent, be very focused, and be very patient. I guess they all apply to art practice very well.

Tell me about your new piece, “Metal, The Fourth Element.” What inspired this piece?

As a kid, I admired soldiers. As a college student, I was active in China’s democracy movement. Justice, pride, idealism always speaks to me and seems romantic to me. As I grow older, I start to see the price we are paying for the justice, pride, and idealism. Looking around Market Street between 6th and 7th, you can see many lost souls. I heard stories from Iraq and Bosnia that former friends, families split by religion or ethnicity, became enemies that sometimes had to kill each other. Same thing happened in China during the revolution. So this romantic notion by many young males of fighting for your country, for the democracy, contrasts strongly with the dark reality of unintended destruction to both civilians and soldiers involved. There is something very dark that we can’t hide from and we can’t shake it off. So that was the inspiration.

In ancient Chinese philosophy, Metal is the 4th of 5 elements. The others are water, earth, fire, and wood. Metal is associated with power, new technology, destruction, and sorrow.

What was your process like when choreographing “Metal, The Fourth Element”?

A lot of research. Thinking about it. Once I got the dancers together, things started to take shape. Dancers contribute a lot of materials. In fact, all duets and trios were created by the dancers themselves with my help. One of my mentors, Paco Gomez once told me the choreographer’s job is to create meaning. So my job as choreographer is more like an integrator that merges my vision with the dancers’ energy and creativity, and molds them into something that takes on the life of its own. To be honest, the vision itself is actually quite vague till we almost have the whole piece ready. Before that, it’s probably better described as inspiration.

Why did you choose to have all male performers in this piece?

The subject matter calls for an all male performance. Also it’s not often to see an all male piece. Although I had plans for a follow up section that will involve a female dancer. It may get developed later.

Tell me about your Taiji Lab for Movement.

I have been training in Chinese Internal Martial arts (Taiji is a form of it) for the past 8 years. I found many movement theories developed over the past 3 thousand years by generations of martial arts can really benefit dancers. So my main motivation is to share this knowledge with the dance community through this lab. Here are some examples: release techniques requires dancers to move with relaxed muscles, just like Taiji. A common thing is that the relaxation turns into a collapse. As a fighting technique, Taiji uses relaxation to achieve a strong martial power, so there is a set of methods to prevent trainees from collapsing. Another example is that Martial art has developed a quite sophisticated method of using the back, especially the lower back. This helps to free the hip joints, reduce pounding on the knees and lower spine, connect the upper and lower body. It could potentially reduce wear and tear and injury in dancing. Martial art went from external (hard, strong) to internal (soft, elastic and explosive) not only because the later could be a more efficient fighting technique but also to address many injuries caused by training in external style. I saw that a lot of this knowledge can be very helpful for dancers. Of course Taiji is a movement and fighting technique, by itself, it’s not a dance.

How did you begin to combine dance with martial arts?

Martial arts make movement more efficient, and intention more clear. To me it was just natural that once you learn both, they will go together.

photo: Weidong Yang dancers: Peter Chou, Indie Stan

Your photography often focuses on dance and movement. How have you explored portraying movement in still images?

To me photography is about finding movement in still images. Its like transition is as or more important than position in dancing, arguably. A picture has to paint in the viewer’s mind the frames that have not been captured. Those frames may never exist. But that is the fun part. I’m especially interested in exploring the internal movement through photography, you know, the energy that flows inside the body, the thing that we can feel but can’t quite tell. There are many techniques you can use to express movement, camera angle, focal length, framing, light, color.

To view Weidong Yang’s photographs, click here. For more information on the upcoming performance of “Metal, The Fourth Element” at the Alonzo King LINES Dance Center, visit the Bay Area Dance Week website. And to learn more about Weidong Yang’s Taiji Lab for Movement, visit the website www.taijilab.net.

Dance Anywhere day: Why you might encounter a flash mob this Friday

by Maura Judkis

Glinda Torvik takes a turn with Bill Hamblin as they join other dancers with the Greater Memphis Square and Round Dance Association in February. (Jim Weber - Asscoiated Press)

Dance Anywhere is a simultaneous public art performance that encourages everyone to dance, wherever they are in the world, at a set time. This year, that time is 3 p.m. EST in the United States, which is equivalent to noon PST, and 9 p.m. in Paris. The event, now in its eighth year, was founded by artist Beth Fein.

Many of the dance groups that have added their Dance Anywhere performances to an interactive map are in California, with residents of San Francisco most likely to catch a performance on Friday. However, dancers as far away as Singapore, Buenos Aires, and Malmö, Sweden will participate. If you’re not brave enough to host your own solo act and there are no performances near you, check out this video of last year’s Dance Anywhere performances.

Source: The Washington Post – The Style Blog

Beth Fein & Dancers at Powell St BART Station , SF photo: Mike DiFilippo

Now that you have danced, share your experience with the rest of the dance anywhere community. You can upload your photos, videos, and stories directly to your profile. Log in to danceanywhere.org and scroll down to see your 2012 dance info. There are five icons next to each year you have participated. These icons will allow you to update your location and dance information, upload photos and videos, and share your stories of your dance anywhere experience.

It’s easy to share! 1. upload your videos to youtube or vimeo. 2. then from your profile page: just click on the triangle icon and then paste the URL of your video on youtube or vimeo. the video will show up automatically on your profile.To upload photos: 1. make sure that they are .jpg files, 2. then click on the photo icon and browse for the file on your computer. 3. Click upload and the photo will show up automatically on your profile. 4. You can also write about your experience by clicking on the pencil icon and sharing your stories.

Please post on your profile and share it on facebook and other social media!

written by Keith Bowers

In two days, if you don’t know what’s coming, you might find yourself in a puzzling situation — here in San Francisco or pretty much anywhere in the world. Let’s say you’re taking your lunch break on Friday. You’re in line at an ATM when you notice someone dancing nearby. She’s really into it. She has no intention of stopping. “Oddball,” you think. Then someone cranks up a car stereo and joins her. Across the street in a courtyard is a group of people doing synchronized steps. Then you spot three more on a corner. Is there something going on you don’t know about? You bet. It’s Dance Anywhere, a coordinated effort to get people around the world to dance at the same time, wherever they are.

Dance Anywhere was created in 2005 by Bay Area resident Beth Fein, who says it has gained thousands of participants on makeshift stages such as train stations, museums, parks, and bridges. Organizers say people in 27 countries have joined the effort, and they have photos on a website to back that up. Fein is among dancers who believe the art form has become too separated from our daily lives, and this is a way to break down that barrier while also stretching the definition of what performance art is, and also to make a regular day seem really not so regular. Anyone, anywhere can dance at the appointed time, but the website lets Two-Steppers, Breakers, and Hustlers tell others where they’ll be and what they’ll do, so the whole thing can seem more puzzling and outrageous to those who don’t know about it.

Dance Anywhere starts Friday at noon. Check out its website to learn more.

“Dance Anywhere”

photo: weidong yang

The world is in the toilet, and at times it feels like a giant cosmic hand is just about to flush us all. But a glimmer of hope for humanity lurks amid events like “Dance Anywhere,” which advises even the two-left-footed among us to pause and bust a joyful move as part of a coordinated, global public art movement. Check the event’s website to line up your time zone (in San Francisco, it’s noon), and limber up for your solo macarena — or find your way to a free professional performance. Bay Area participants include Anne Bluethenthal Dance (at SFMOMA), Raisa Simpson and Push Dance Co. (at the Oakland Museum of California), and Alyce Finwall Dance Theatre (on 343 Sansome’s rooftop deck). In the words of Footloose: dance your ass off! (Eddy)

Noon, free

Various locations

www.danceanywhere.org

Making masks and moving with them is the most exciting way to dance with students without  having privacy worries.

What is the story that these creatures tell and how do they move?

Venture Dance Project, "counter (tops) & parts"

Kristin Damrow is a performer and choreographer in the San Francisco Bay Area. A year ago she started the Venture Dance Project, a project-based company that focuses on collaboration with dance artists and musicians. Kristin has never performed in dance anywhere®, but you may see her photo on our website. Kristin participated in a dance anywhere photo shoot earlier this year. She will be dancing on March 30th at the Berkeley Art Museum.

What made you decide to form your own company and how was that process?

I have danced with a lot of independent choreographers and sometimes I feel you can’t have your own voice within someone else’s choreography. I did do a lot of collaboration where I created movement, but I wanted to get my own movement out there and feel that satisfaction of moving the way I wanted to, and then seeing how dancers could translate that. I have always been really interested in choreography, so I just decided to start this project. Now we are a year in and there is a lot more that needs to happen until we are fully established. It’s a long road. We are a project-based company, so I work with a slightly different group for each project. It is really important to me that my dancers are enjoying the work. I think it is really important as artists for us to feel some connection to what we are doing, so I leave it up to my dancers. If they are not feeling a particular topic we are working on they aren’t contracted to be a part of it. I am really open about people coming and going. It gives new insight in every work to have new people coming and going and I find that really beneficial. When I have dancers that stay longer for multiple projects, it is really awesome to see how they interact with new dancers and I always get something new out of them.

How have you come to identify your company?

The whole idea behind my work is the collaboration aspect. I really feel that there is a connection between the music and my movement. My movement is really physical and demanding of my dancers. I really enjoy seeing that kind of work presented. Finding a musician that is able to translate that into music is awesome. In my last show we collaborated with a group of musicians that performed live, which was a really powerful experience for the audience and for the dancers, especially with a piece composed specifically for the work. I have also done the opposite where I create the work and the musicians put something totally opposite making a whole different aesthetic. It’s really just music and dance being created at the same time.

Do you work with the same musician?

It is different for each project. In my last project, counter (tops) & parts there were three different musicians: Robert Shelton, Geneva Harrison, and Jack Nochimow.

What are you showing for dance anywhere?

For dance anywhere we are still very much at the point of work-in-progress. We are taking it into an outside venue, which we aren’t planning on doing for the final showing. The music won’t be a part of this one yet. The dance anywhere performance will be more an investigation to see how the audience reacts.

Have you done it outside before?

No. It will be an interesting experience for everyone. I am really interested in seeing how the audience reacts. I am working with the idea of self-boundaries and want to do a mini feedback session afterwards to see if that translates. It is always nice to get random audience members in there. It’s not your usual dance crowd. That’s something that’s nice about doing outdoor performances. It’s a more general public that may happen to stop by. You can get some really wonderful insights.

Venture Dance Project, "counter (tops) & parts"

How does an outdoor performance differ from a more formal theater experience?

It definitely has an influence because people see us and say “ooh performance in outdoor space!” When someone stops to watch and see what you are doing there is an unawareness that is really genuine. They’re not coming in with a preconceived notion that they might have when sitting down to watch a dance show. They are thrown into the element, which creates a more genuine influence on their thoughts because it’s more in the moment.

Which relates to your topic of self-boundary…

Exactly, because we’re stepping into the boundaries of a public place – everyone is walking by, doing their own thing, and that’s almost stepping into people’s own zone also and affecting their daily routine, which they may or may not accept.

In researching this new piece, where are you in exploring “self-boundary”?

I have presented it to my dancers, mostly through my own personal reflection on what that means to me, and now they are still in the process of figuring it out. That’s something I am totally into, because we all have these different ideas of what those boundaries are and how different parts of ourselves can take over at different times or just in general our body can take over. So they’re in the process of exploring it. I am curious to see what happens when we take it outside. It will be a totally different space where they can find their own. Some of the performance will be improv-based with the phrase material I have already given them, but they can take it more on their own and hopefully this will be more of an exploration this Friday.

Have you participated in dance anywhere before?

No, this is my first year! I remember last year I went and saw a number of independent artists performing here and there but wasn’t officially part of the event, but more a viewer. I got into it this year when Tammy [Cheney] approached me in class and asked if I wanted to be more involved. Any option to support an event like this where anyone can express the joy of dance is a wonderful opportunity.

Sounds like you are a dance anywhere fan!

Totally. It was interesting when we were doing the photo shoot, people were just walking by and you could tell everyone was so curious. One guy came up and asked us what we were doing and if we were having a performance and Beth [Fein, artistic director] said it was for dance anywhere – anyone can participate and dance. Dance is such an expressive art form I think sometimes people shy away from it because you do have to expose yourself to put yourself out there. When you feel the sense of community and also worldly, it opens doors up to people who might be more timid with dance. It generalizes it more that it is something everyone can do – you don’t have to be a company, you don’t have to be taking a specific class, you can just be in your backyard and know that at that same time everyone is dancing. It’s a really powerful thing.

Venture Dance Project will be performing in front of the UC Berkeley Art Museum in the sculpture garden on March 30, 2012 at noon. They will be presenting a new work-in-progress called “Holding,” which explores the boundaries within ourselves – how we choose to break through them or let them affect our lives. Visit Venture Dance Project’s website or find them on facebook.