Week 3
Flashmob Tour Blob by Sarai Warsoff
Even though I’ve been a part of the Boch Center Education team since 2019, this year is my first time doing a fully in-person program! As the Flashmob choreographer this week, it was awesome to not only create a fun and interactive flashmob with the two dance teaching assistants, but to discover flashmob in its entirety with the teens. Dance is a very sensitive and vulnerable way of communicating for a lot of individuals, but one of the magical aspects of flashmob is the entire community of City Spotlights supporting one another to use dance to not only share a positive message, but to just have FUN! Even though it was incredibly hot, sticky, and sweaty, watching the teens bond together through the unspoken language of dance with each other (and a few tourists who joined at Faneuil Hall!) made the dehydration worth it.
Week 3 by Ananda Hines
WHOA! Flashmob came and flew by so fast this summer. Hey lovely people reading this. It’s your new fave, Ananda (Dance TA), bringing you the experience of flashmob. During this extremely hot, depressing weather, the teens were able to keep their spirits high and deliver a SPECTACULAR performance. As we travelled around the Downtown/Business District areas, the teens really seemed to be having a blast leaving the theater but also bonding with one another. Even if that bonding looked like strongly encouraging spectators to attend their final showcase, while shoving flyers into their hands. This energy continued throughout the day as teens encouraged each other and themselves to have fun and ignore the heat because dancing is so much more fun. I think it was most interesting to watch a few teens start to feel tired or overwhelmed but shoot back up to join a dance circle that had started, or the flashmob and/or other group dances performed.
The most exciting part of this year’s flashmob was, in addition to being fully in-person, the addition of staff. With more assistants, there were more ways to interact with the full group and encourage everyone to keep going. It was my personal duty to ensure that willing teens were able to be misted with water and it was probably the happiest I was that week.
Within the last 3 weeks of City Spotlights, the teens have been working together and bonding within specialties and other small opportunities that arise, but during the day of flashmob (and even while learning the choreography), there was a plethora of victories (both visible and hidden) where teens were overjoyed to be working together learning these moves and working to learn them well enough for their performance. Even now that flashmob is over, they still talk about the experience, the choreo, times where they made connections with others, and overall, the amount of fun that they had.
I can’t wait to see their final showcase!