Anna Halprin, Blank Placard Happening (1967)

* Action/performance réactivée dans le cadre de PERFORMING LIVES par les membres du Laboratoire du Geste / septembre 2015

originally performed by the San Fransicso Dancer’s Workshop in 1967, a group of dancers are protesting, but the signs they are holding are all blank. As passersby and witnesses encounter the dancers, they ask, “What are you protesting ?” and the response from the dancers is, “What do you want to protest ?”

"People wanted to protest but their voices weren’t being heard in any effective way. So we marched with blank placards, and we collected a lot of protest statements and wrote them down. Then we marched back with the protests written on the signs. But you need to get permission from the city authorities, and you have to stand ten feet from the person in front of you ; we did that so we wouldn’t get arrested. We had previously been arrested during protests against the Vietnam War. " (Anna Halprin)