Thank You! Thank You! Thank You to everyone who made it to last night’s FlashDance at City Hall! Sooooo much goodness & exactly what our hero needed It was once again stupendous and makes me even more bummed that I did not manage to have a June FD - what was up with that?

Anyway from the Amazing Filipino(?) Dance Squad, to the Flava Flav impersonator to the Italian tourists it was awesome. And even the fact that we got busted and had to move locations all worked out well (see below!). Simply a great FlashDance! I hope you all had as much fun as I did & I can’t wait for August (hint: we’ll be hitting the same spot we always hit for August FD…).

Thanks again for making my night!

3 quick additional notes:

Click HERE for more…

You know when there is one of those things that is seriously cool & you want it, but you don’t want to admit it because that wouldn’t be cool?

Woooot!

My FlashDances won an SF WEEKLY BEST OF THE BAY:

http://www.sfweekly.com/bestof/2008/award/best-flash-mob-1032566/

I think they summarized the whole thing pretty damn well :

Best Flash Mob (2008)
FlashDance, put on by Amandeep Jawa
http://www.deeptrouble.com/flashdance
Step one: E-mail flashdance-join AT deeptrouble.com to get on the list. Step two: Await message with the 411 for the next roving street dance party. Step three: Show up and boogie while onlookers wonder what the heck is going on, or just stop asking questions and join in themselves. Started around two years ago by a Silicon Valley software engineer (the rare kind who actually can whip out the moves on the dancefloor) who lives in the Mission and can be spotted every once in a while wearing a giant disco ball costume, Jawa has been coordinating the dances since he spotted a salsa dance party along the Seine in Paris and thought, “Why not in San Francisco?” He feeds funk, soul, pop, and some Indian electronica off his MacBook through some amps at such locales as the 24th Street BART station or Embarcadero Plaza.

& thanks to everyone who has left a comment over at their website

I’m seriously happy about this!

Hey Kids -

So Saturday night we had our first FlashDance of the season at the 24th & Mission BART station, very close to “Deep International HQ. Not surprisingly, this 13th FlashDance ROCKED. Why did it rock? An excellent question, Dear Reader! It rocked for the same reasons FD always rocks:
- great people
- good music (I was pretty happy with the mix - see the playlist after the jump)
- random sillyness (human arch, dancing in the streets, 12 year old (?) break dancing girl, invasion of the Dance Mission dancers, and me serenading the crowd to the Pet Shop Boys’ “You Were Always On My Mind” )

Also for once, someone took some really great pix (Thanks Kelleth!)
(for more GREAT pix just click here)

Anyway - if you missed this one, get on the list & get ready for May when we’ll have another one - I hope you make it!

For the Playlist - click “More” below

Click HERE for more…

This is a placeholder post - more on all this coming soon I promise.

[Note: What follows is a long ramble about my 8th and 9th flash mob dance parties, FlashDances 8 & 9 & what worked and didn’t. If you want to cut straight to the PIX click here, or the MOVIE or the PLAYLIST ]

Woooooooo! So Saturday night was my 9th FlashDance & if you didn’t come, ummm… well it was ok and kinda fun. If you did come or didn’t but CAN handle the truth: WOW - that was the best one yet! Am I the only one who thinks FD9 was the best? (Who else has been to all 9?)

Click above for the movie

CLICK HERE for the PIX

FlashDance 8, a month ago (July 28th), was technically the most difficult & the smallest attended ever, but still managed to be a hell of a lot of fun. The big thing I learned at FD8 (besides that people don’t like going to the Marina) is that the crowd is everything and as long as there is music, everything else is details. In addition to being the smallest attended, FD8 had the worst weather, the most location problems*, the most significant technical difficulties, and I was super-late. Ugh. But even after all that - we had big fun! Why? because people were IN to it. For example, when the audio cut out - people just sang :-)… all in all I biked home with a big smile on my face after FD8….

That all being said, all the problems stressed me out & disappointed me. If everyone who was there wasn’t so much fun and so forgiving, I would have been seriously bummed about the night. So I really wanted to FlashDance 9 to be more like FD7 - BIG SIMPLE FUN EASY.

We nailed it! You guys are awesome. That was SO what I wanted. Here’s the scoop: Click HERE for more…

NOTE: Please email me any good pics you have! Also I’ve just realized that there is no photographic evidence to suggest I actually dance at my own FlashDances )

Gretchen works it out

Yep. That did it. FlashDance 7 was THE way to get me fully back into my life. I sooooo love you guys. That was just AWESOME. Even though it could compete with FD3 for beauty, it was my FAVORITE FlashDance so far - it was just so wacky and surprising:

Allegra’s amazing synchronized group line dances (we’re soooo learning one for next FlashDance! Think Jackson 5!)

The bizarre turn of events when the cops dashed through the crowd to tackle the wallet-thief (yay cops!)

Archana’s great one-woman reproduction of the Saalam-E-Ishq Bollywood dance number (Did I swoon? I think I may have swooned?… In a very manly way of course )

lots of cute kids!

The only thing missing was something stage-like for me to dance on (yes I have a problem) & ok - I think I need to get YET a bigger sound system! I JUST bought the last one - sigh.

Here are some pix from Flickr courtesy of Romel! (click on the pix for more):

 

Read on to get the playlist & more thoughts… Click HERE for more…

Two weeks ago (03/10/2007) we kicked off the FlashDance season for 2007 with a bang at Pier 7 & as per usual much fun was had. Here’s my report - or you can just skip to the playlist below….. (If you don’t know what a FlashDance is click here)

(thanks for the video Marco! & flickr pix)

Like every time I do a FlashDance, there is this moment of dread that always seems to attack me a few hours before the event & leaves me wanting to hide rather than go put on a FlashDance. It usually involves the 1-2 punch of my reluctance to spend the time getting all my gear together (when I could be relaxing from my full-to-the-gills life) and all my fears about what may go wrong. These two issues always seem combine to overwhelm my standard optimisim & general enjoyment of FlashDance in the hours leading up to one. Luckily, this time around, the latter half of my moment of dread ended up saving the evening

Click HERE for more…

If you have any good pix, please mail ‘em, mine are lame as usual

Well, it has been a year since I started my little experiment with flash mob dancing & this past Saturday we celebrated in true FlashDance style with our 5th flash mob dance party! I guess it is no longer an experiment. FlashDance is BIG fun & I’m pretty damn happy about it. Thank you all so much!

After a year, I’ve come to realize that FD ties together a few threads of my life in unexpected ways and has become a much cooler thing for me personally than I ever imagined - call it the secret ‘Deep Agenda behind FlashDance
(Yes, I’m full enough of myself to have an agenda & I think everyone else should have one too!)

click here to watch a movie

Uh-oh soapbox alert! This is your last chance to skip ahead to the FD5 summary without hearing me philosophize….. Ok…. you’ve been warned

I’ve been thinking a lot about FD since the interview in SFist & realizing more and more that as much fun as it is just by being a kick-ass dance party, it means a lot more to me than that on numerous levels:

Click HERE for more…

Ahoy Flashdancers!

(If you have any good pix PLEASE email them… mine are lame)
Thanks so much for all of you who showed up to my latest FlashDance! (Saturday 9/30/06)

I think it was around 120 people dancing at its peak. There were many great moments but one of my favorites was a woman coming up to me and explaining that she and her friends meant to go to the Opera but decided that our FlashDance was more fun! Alix Rosenthal, the best candidate for District 8 Supervisor came by too which was cool. I didn’t recharge my battery after Burning Man & thus the power died, but it was just as we hit the planned shutdown time anyway…..

A Few Random Thoughts & Questions:

Click HERE for more…

Well kids, it’s official: My FlashDance parties are quite pleasant. I have come to this conclusion after FD 3 - around 120 people dancing away for a few hours on a gorgeous night at the big plaza in front of the Ferry Building. I thought the last location was the best, but this was maybe even better. This one was a a bit bigger than the last maybe 120 dancing at any given time, maybe 140 showed up over the course of the evening….

I was exhausted, I had spent the night before at the hospital with two of my dearest friends who were giving birth to an adorable little girl & had gotten maybe 3 hours of real sleep that night. But the vibe was so great, the people (you!) were all so fun, and the night was so beautiful, I was brought back from the dead & forced to shake it, as I am wont to do… THANK YOU ALL…..

For those of you who missed it, this here video says it all:

CLICK PIC TO PLAY MOVIE

& here are some more pix….. & here is someone else’s blog post (thanks general fuzz!) - complete with YouTube movie!

Click HERE for more…