The Blank Placard Dance

Reenactment of Blank Placard Dance by Anna Halprin, originally performed in 1967 in San Francisco in reaction to the Vietnam War and in response to social unrest in the USA. It is a silent walk performed by some twenty dancers carrying blank placards and silently marching down the busy streets of the city. When people asked “What are you protesting », the marchers answered “What do YOU want to protest”? and collected their answers. Various musicians marched also along side. Anna explores the political dimension of performance and its inscription on urban space, at the crossroads of happening, street theater and activist art. She searches to test social and institutional constraints, to trouble the frontier between performers and audiences and to encourage direct experience as both an artistic as well as a political commitment.