Folks, there may at some point be a highlight reel, but until then, we present to you in all its celebratory diversity and raw glory, the wonderful, the glorious, the unstoppable
International Dance Patch Day.

Yes, it's true, on Thursday 28 August 2008, at precisely 5:30pm, this entire planet was unified in marks and moves. Behold...



zerogee : I was at Build-A-Bear, Navy Pier, Chicago IL, where I made a dance patch the floor with masking tape, square-ish, about three or four square feet. Tashia, one of my bearbuilders started it with me and we danced danced danced on it.


Lincøln: My Dance Patch was pretty much fail. First of all, I was in Black Rock City, which has dirt roads, no strike that, it has dust roads, so neither chalk nor tape would work. and to make matters worse on International Dance Patch Day, Black Rock City was hit with a miserable white-out all day. For those of you unfamiliar with what a white-out is, I will explain, at least in this context. A white-out is when the wind picks up and blows real hard and fast across the playa and sends the extremely fine playa dust up into the air. These plumes of white dust can reach 500 feet high and the white-out conditions can last hours or even days. When it gets really bad, visibility drops to about five or six feet. And the fine dust gets everywhere. Everywhere. Eyes and lungs are the worst, but nowhere is safe. But I went out to the corner of 5:30 and Impala and with an extra tent stake, carved a large square into the street and wrote Dance Patch above it. Not one picture came out that shows this. I came back out the next day, and the windswept dust had completely taken away all evidence of any Dance Patch. I took no video, and only a few pictures, because of the horrible weather conditions.
This was the first dancer (besides myself) to dance the patch:

I only managed to get one other into the patch:

I consider my efforts to have failed. But I danced. In a patch. And others joined me.

susy derkins:
I found a great spot and danced at 17:30 GST, alone. It was 11:30, so sneaking out from work was in order. A short bus trip and a 5 minute walk to the site. A sweater for a tripod. A truck driver honked, a passersby kept on looking at his feet, noticeably worried about me.
Then, at my 17:30 got two underage nonplayers to draw another dance patch and dance on it. The design was based on the "meeting points" that are marked troughout the city, to be used in case of earthquakes.
It was fun.
Let´s do it all the time.



Myrna sez:

Before I left Penn Station I bought the largest clubs of colored chalk I could find. I then used the discrimination of a Sommelier to select the finest portions of sidewalk for the delicate task of dancing sans musica.

12:30 pm, Eastern time:



In Times Square, the activity of drawing the Dance Patch actually attracted more attention than dancing in it, meanwhile the people in Battery park were completely unfazed by the entire endeavor, with the exception of one woman whose confusion was completely dissolved by the discovery that it was a Dance Patch. Ah yes, of course. A Dance Patch.



Minches

So.... I hate to admit this... but my original file corrupted. I was given permission to re-enact and add to the submission. This is the same song, and same silly dance (pardon the deer in the headlights look, I'm actually not looking at the camera, I'm watching and dancing along with the youtube video of the song). Scarlett, this dance is for you for bringing Bollywood into my life:



So, though you may miss my co-workers looking at me like a total moron, you gain me dancing in my living room, which is in full view of the fancy restaurant across the street, where I had a lively audience that kept waving and clapping... they then invited me to join them for dinner after I bowed. I did not. Despite how things may appear once you get to know me, I am actually rather shy with strangers.



Bex says:

This was a full-day venture for me. It started at 9:30 in the morning when I met up with

Ben and Rainbow Brite.

Chalkless, we improvised with water:

We bumped Miss Brite's delightful mix of T-Pain, Fergie, and Britney spears.

RB has, it turns out, a stellar selection of trashy pop music.

When we realized that Lank planned the event for 5:30, we decided to come back again.
In the meantime, I aquired chalk and made about 20 to 30 dance patches

all over the Mission.

I did a little jig

in each one.

I got people dancing throughout the day:

though most people looked at me like a leper and avoided stepping in my patches.

The best part was getting yelled at by a twitchy drug dealer who didn't want attention drawn to her corner.

She told me threateningly that I should take this project across the street. I told her that was a great idea, thanked her, and went to the 16th Mission BART entrance and made several.

I saw a bike cop there and asked him if it was okay to chalk the sidewalks here. He said, smiling, "Even if that were illegal, you're just so fast, how could I catch you?"

A drunk homeless guy claimed my patch in the name of his gang, even tagging it and posing for me.

I bumped into one guy over and over as he wandered all over the Mission selling cigarettes. He danced in several of my patches.

This nice hipster was the only person who asked me about it and actually promised (unfulfilled) to go to the 5:30 rally I told him about.

5:30 in front of Mr. S (S & M supplies).

This turned out to be quite a showing.

Ben:

Rainbow Brite:

me (Bex):

Anna One:

Lank, who had serious moves:

And just like a real middle school dance a few people stood against the wall and watched, refusing to dance.
Lowteck was dragged out a couple of times:

And Avidd Opolis stepped over the line only for a second or two:

And Jeremy did some sweet goth dancing so that someone could be too cool for school:

Here's the VIDEO:



(Lank laments that his "serious moves" were not caught on this video clip. Probably for the best, as said moves are known to destroy video signals with their sheer ludicrosity.)

Bus drivers danced with us:

Bus stoppers danced with us:

Passers by danced with us:

Most people declined and looked suspicious. One group of guys said, "We can't dance, we just got fisted. We're exhausted."
Truck drivers asked to see our boobs, but we told them we had to see theirs first. (No boob-looking exchange took place.)

Sutro looked on lovingly but refused to pose for any pix.

Secret Agent
On exactly the same planet at exactly the same time, Secret Agent posted up at his occasional stakeout point:
I went over to Birkbeck college, wondering if today would be the day Zizek might emerge. I chalked, and I danced.



After a pause to cool off, rest my aching limbs, I made my way towards Soho and met up with two friends. We chalked at Cambridge Circus, in front of Spamalot. There was a bit of a Melbourne Shuffle lesson.



Then he taught me a variation on it too.

But people weren't joining in there, so we moved on to Leicester Square, where Kelly was so pleased with the first patch she chalked that she chalked another one right beside it. Excellent behaviour.



We danced there for a while. A woman flyering for some club joined us briefly, as did this drunk woman.



To be fair, she might not have been drunk, but she stank of sherry, and was quite happy to yammer on at us in Spanish though we could only respond with shrugs (I only caught one word in ten, and they didn't string together very well). At least she danced.
Eventually, we headed out. Trafalgar square was crawling with police and people either setting up or striking some strange sand-rugby event. It didn't feel like a nice place to dance, with or without a patch, but I did spot this:



Clearly other dance patchers were about.

On Hungerford Bridge we drew a race track shaped dance patch. And made a three person conga line.



We finished crossing the bridge, and drew a very large patch by the river (quite close to where this happened, in fact). We were joined very quickly, and not just by security.



This mother was seriously into the dance patch, but didn't manage to stay long, even though her son was into it too.

A woman in a short dress and heels joined in for a while. Complaining that her boyfriend was still sat at their table nearby because he didn't think he could dance on crutches. She didn't stay long, but returned later and he was proved wrong.

It was time for another Melbourne Shuffle lesson, this time for a boy of 12 or so.



His grandmother didn't take long to join in. And then it didn't take long for an entire squadron of other 12 year olds to turn up with their chaperones.



They turned the patch into a fine kind of chaos. They made me pose for photos.

When they left, the woman in heels came back, this time with her boyfriend. They danced all the way through our final [boring] conversation with security. With the grandmother and grandson, who were still there and almost masters of their new dance.

Vena Nightmare
I did this with a friend of mine. We scoured her step-sister's room for some chalk, which we eventually found. We rode our bikes to the nearby university and drew our patch. After a few moments of hesitation we jumped in and started dancing. Reactions were generally to make sure no part of one's body entered the field of the dance patch. We did get ten people to join in, by my count. And one person was particularly funny in this. His lady friend urged him to participate as they walked by but he refused to without any proper instruction. I jumped in and demonstrated how one could walk by and simply dance through the patch. He asked questions and I gave him a walkthrough (lol) of the proper technique. Finally he did it with flying colours.

Some people would ask where the music was, or suggest that we get a boom box. We replied "The music is in your head!" That phrase really appealed to me, and even as I tired and was reduced to imagining slow songs, it never left me. We'd also call out things to passer-bys, pleading for them to join in.

We had so much fun, we're going to do it again.

Since pictures are currently unavailable for my part of this- this is an artist's rendering of the event.

And this is where it took place.