Text
Transcript - Audio Label for City Dance '78
By Anna Halprin
This is City Dance. City Dance came at a time in the history of our city where we were having problems -things like our mayor being killed, Harvey Milk being murdered, The Castro District and our gay community constantly harassed. And it seemed like a good time to try something new. We called it City Dance, and it was intended to heal. It was also intended to heal by connecting us through our personal experiences with all the different areas in our particular city. Well, we started naturally at Twin Peaks, the highest point in our city, at sunrise with an inspiring prayer, then walking our way down to the park, the Golden Gate Park, and there we did some wonderful spontaneous community dances. From there, we went to the Castro District and into the subway to a series of various neighborhoods, engaging the residents spontaneously in whatever we were doing. We also performed in parks and streets by members of the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop had prepared little episodes. Other times, the audience, the bystanders, were invited to join. Soon it became like the Pied Piper. People began to follow us. We even went into the subway and ended up at Justin Herman Plaza, where many people by then had joined the journey, and together we celebrated our diversity and our commonalities in dance, in music. We were drawing and writing our thoughts of what we wanted our city to be. It was so successful that we repeated doing City Dance one more time. Today, years later, it is being danced in Europe, in Paris, in Cologne, at the Edinburgh Festival and in Boulder, Colorado. People need this in our world today. They need to become community again.
By Anna Halprin
This is City Dance. City Dance came at a time in the history of our city where we were having problems -things like our mayor being killed, Harvey Milk being murdered, The Castro District and our gay community constantly harassed. And it seemed like a good time to try something new. We called it City Dance, and it was intended to heal. It was also intended to heal by connecting us through our personal experiences with all the different areas in our particular city. Well, we started naturally at Twin Peaks, the highest point in our city, at sunrise with an inspiring prayer, then walking our way down to the park, the Golden Gate Park, and there we did some wonderful spontaneous community dances. From there, we went to the Castro District and into the subway to a series of various neighborhoods, engaging the residents spontaneously in whatever we were doing. We also performed in parks and streets by members of the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop had prepared little episodes. Other times, the audience, the bystanders, were invited to join. Soon it became like the Pied Piper. People began to follow us. We even went into the subway and ended up at Justin Herman Plaza, where many people by then had joined the journey, and together we celebrated our diversity and our commonalities in dance, in music. We were drawing and writing our thoughts of what we wanted our city to be. It was so successful that we repeated doing City Dance one more time. Today, years later, it is being danced in Europe, in Paris, in Cologne, at the Edinburgh Festival and in Boulder, Colorado. People need this in our world today. They need to become community again.