{"id":278644,"date":"2026-04-21T15:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/278644\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T15:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:29:07","slug":"bay-area-dance-week-returns-with-150-free-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/278644\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay Area Dance Week Returns With 150+ Free Events"},"content":{"rendered":"

Choreographer Mark Foehringer grew up in a dance company in Brazil that did community events. Years later, running his own eponymous dance company in San Francisco, he wanted to do performances everyone could enjoy. <\/p>\n

So, every year for Bay Area Dance Week, he puts on one of its highlights: Dancing in the Park in Golden Gate Park.<\/p>\n

Foehringer looks forward to engaging the audience every year. \u201cIt\u2019s really fun to all get together to celebrate what we love so much,\u201d he says. \u201cWe spend so much time in the studios, making dances, that we don\u2019t get to see each other\u2019s work. It\u2019s like a huge open door for those who may be curious about what a particular style of dance is like\u2026 That\u2019s one of my favorite parts about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Bay Area Dance Week’s Kickoff is One Dance, held this year in Jesse Square on April 24th at 12pm.(Robbie Sweeny\/Courtesy of BADW)<\/p>\n

Bay Area Dance Week<\/a> (BADW), taking place this year from April 24th to May 3rd, began in 1998, putting the diversity of the dance scene here on display with open rehearsals, classes<\/a>, workshops and performances throughout the Bay Area\u2014all for free. It is wildly popular, with about 21,000 attendees showing up to more than 150 events last year that included styles like Bhangra, K-Pop, hip hop, aerial, folk, and West African. <\/p>\n

Anyone can join in the kickoff One Dance<\/a>, which takes place at noon on April 24th. Dudley Flores, the artistic director of the beloved San Francisco Rhythm and Motion<\/a> who leads the event, puts the moves online ahead of time<\/a> so people can learn them. Several hundred participate in the event, which is held in high visibility spaces in San Francisco such as at Union Square, City Hall\u2019s rotunda, and at the Yerba Buena Gardens<\/a>. This year, One Dance will be at Jesse Square, in front of the former Jewish Contemporary Museum building. <\/p>\n

Flores grew up in the city and went to University of San Francisco, planning to become a doctor. Looking for something to do other than studying for his biology class or work (he also had a full-time job with the airlines), he took a class at USF called Rhythm and Motion that was billed for everyone, no experience necessary. Just the warmup exhausted him, but after making it through the class, he was hooked. <\/p>\n

For One Dance, he starts by picking the music, choosing something infectious. This year, he chose two songs: \u201cMakeba\u201d by Jain and \u201cEnergy\u201d by Mical Teja.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ The Art of Gesture: Central Asian & Persian-Inspired Dance is on April 30th at 5:30pm(Billy Chang\/Courtesy of BADW)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, just sort of in light of the world and how people are feeling, I wanted to focus on joy,\u201d Flores says. \u201cDancing and community bring people together, and dancing can help us fill our cup.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dance community in the Bay Area<\/a> is the largest per capita in the country, says Wayne Hazzard, the executive director of Dancer\u2019s Group<\/a>, presenter of BADW. The festival lives up to that reputation with more than 2,500 artists participating. <\/p>\n

The inspiration for BADW came from the way visual artists welcome everyone inside their studios several times a year, says Hazzard. \u201cThe thought was to model this after the wonderful Open Studios, so you open your door in some way, whether to a class or a performance setting, and show what you want to show\u2026 In that way, it embraced the kind of radical ethos that is the Bay Area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the year, Hazzard meets people who ask what he does, and when he tells them he works with Dancers Group, they invariably tell him they know about Dance Week. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just locals who come. Hazzard meets people from other states who travel just for the festival, especially for the opening event.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Free Fry Body Music Jam is April 26th at 1pm(Courtesy of BADW)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have people come specifically for One Dance,\u201d he says. \u201cThey would learn the moves from Dudley online, and they would fly from Chicago to perform it on their vacation. People are like, \u2018I get to do this fun thing, and it’s in this beautiful city, and somebody’s teaching me to do it\u2019\u2014and we would just be amazed when we saw people coming from all over the US to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foehringer\u2019s company<\/a> celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and their style is what he calls contemporary ballet. (\u201cIf you ask ballet dancers, they say it’s contemporary dance. If you ask contemporary dancers, they say it’s ballet,\u201d he says.) But, he enjoys pretty much all types of dance, and seeing so many is his favorite thing about the week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think I’ve ever seen a style of dance that I am not interested in in some way\u2014the variety and the diversity\u2014and it’s so great to see how people are thinking about putting their ideas and their concepts and their stories and the history of their own work into movement,\u201d says Foehringer. It\u2019s just exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bay Area dance community offers pretty much anything dance-wise you could think of in some form,\u201d he concludes\u2014and Bay Area Dance Week is the place to see it all.<\/p>\n

\/\/ Bay Area Dance Week runs from April 24th through May 3rd at various locations around the Bay Area. All events are free but some require RSVP. Find out what\u2019s on when and sign up at dancersgroup.org\/badw<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Loving the Air: Aerial Dance Class is April 30th at 6pm (RJ Muna\/Courtesy of BADW) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Choreographer Mark Foehringer grew up in a dance company in Brazil that did community events. Years later, running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[120208,120205,120200,120204,120206,120201,120202,120203,101,103,102,120207,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-278644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bay-area-dance","tag-bay-area-dance-class","tag-bay-area-dance-week","tag-dance-class-san-francisco","tag-dance-performance-san-francisco","tag-free-dance-class","tag-free-dance-performance","tag-free-dancing","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-dance","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}