Sunday, June 22, 2008

oh so quiet

It's a scene out of a musical- walking through Union square, and suddenly strangers begin to dance and sing- one voice at first, and soon a chorus line appears out of seemingly nowhere.

Only it's not a movie, it's a San Francisco based performance art group calling them selves "Public Displays of Musical Affection". The Video itself is called 1...2...3:45 6/7/8. Uploaded by Billy Green who was clearly deeply involved in the project. Kudos to all who took part.



A long distance dedication for a friend to whom this pertains...

Don't you love it when the world bursts into song?

3 comments:

BGreen said...

Well, let's see if I can fill in a couple of blanks for you.

I wouldn't say necessarily that I was "deeply involved." I met the organizer back in January when we were both taking an evening class at ACT. She asked me if I wanted to dance in this thing she was doing, and I said that I would rather videotape it than perform in it. So Chip and I went to one rehearsal in Golden Gate Park a week before the actual event, then we showed up at Union Square on 6/7/8.

She advertised the event with postcards that read "1... 2... 3:45 6/7/8" and that told people to be in Union Square at that time on that date to see "something wonderful" (there's a copy of one of the postcards on my blog that I posted on June 2nd). The name was a teaser that didn't give anything away, but was easy to remember. So that's more or less the name she gave to the event as a whole.

I originally posted the video under the title, "Union Square Musical." But she asked me to change the title to the event's title, so I obliged.

I'd have loved to have had more friends with cameras in order to get crowd reaction shots as well, but the resources just weren't there this time. As it is, the third camera was operated by someone who showed up at the last minute offering to help in any way he could, so he wound up babysitting coats and pointing a video camera at the dancers.

I tried to invite some friends to be dancers in the event. When I described the idea to them, they gave an "Oh, I think I'm washing my hair that afternoon" kind of response.

I bet I get a more positive response next time.

I also gave a full-resolution copy of the video to Current TV (current.com) at their request, so the video on that site is of much better quality than the YouTube version.

Elizabeth said...

I wish life was always like this...

Doralong said...

That was way too much fun!