UPCOMING 2012 SPRING PERFORMANCES
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RANDOM ACTS OF DANCE

San Francisco cuts to dance have been devastating this year. Our response, instead of contracting in fear, is to institute a year of guerilla art that we are calling 50 Random Acts of Dance. We understand that in this bad economy people cannot afford to spend money on the arts. We also understand that free art is elusive these days. Our solution is to give away our gift of dance. In our project, 50 Random Acts of Dance, our dance company, along with an assortment of other artists, will be traveling to various locations in San Francisco in an attempt to bring free art and dance to our community.

Our first RAD was September 18th, 2009 at the Food Court at the Westfield Shopping Mall: San Francisco Centre.

Event Summary: ABD dancers Heidi, Chin Chin, and Liz, along with Anne Bluethenthal (boom box in hand) cueing our music and Robert Scheffler as our video documenter, set out to the food court for our first of 50 Random Acts of Dance. Arriving around 11:30 in the afternoon so as to catch as many people on their lunch breaks as possible, we scoped out our first location to share our art. The food court in this mall is quite large so we picked a good looking spot with a fair amount of people and sat down at different tables in close proximity. I felt a little nervous before we started as I thought about how people might react to our spontaneous show of art in this public place. Will they enjoy our gift and be grateful? Will they be annoyed and ignore us? And less impopened and some left the space. Applause and loud cheering came from one corner of the food court space we had occupied. I looked- two guys were standing with grins splayed across their faces. We had positively impacted at least these two young men! The others, I noticed, were less enthusiastic. Most went on as though nothing had happened, and some were glad it was over. -- Heidi Buehler
 

What other dancers have to say:

I love the challenge and excitement of performing in a new space each time. Having to adapt the material to the environment keeps us on our toes...no pun intended. ;). I've also enjoyed observing how people react to our performances. It still amazes me that some people are not comfortable watching and are determined to ignore us, even when we're moving so close to them. On the other hand, we've had many enthusiastic responses from people who appear unlikely to be interested in dance. I think we have a bit of video footage from the RAD we did on the sidewalk near 20th St and Treat where a large man walked by shouting something about how he can do plies too. He even did his own dance move as he was walking by. I remember we were all surprised he knew what a plié was. -- Sarah Pomarico

It was an exciting and challenging event. I love to catch people's attention and enjoyed their prying eyes. I played with them and how I can make people feel surprised.  -Mihyun Lee