ExploreDance

This year's Dance Parade was big and multifarious, with over 4,000 registered performers, and many who sashayed in from the sidelines.

'Tis the season. The weather cooperated beautifully. The AIDs walk, the ALS walk, and the Run for kidney disease, all took place the weekend of May 17th and 18th. Benefit dance concerts for important causes like those are numerous, year-round, but the Dance Parade affirms dance itself. The event aims to raise awareness of dance in the city, in all its forms and variations. Costumes, music, and politics are part and parcel. Marching bands and cross-dressers too. Some protested our 1926 cabaret laws (still in effect), and the war, with 'Freedom to Dance' and 'Make Dance Not War' placards.

The paraders formed at 28th Street. For over an hour the organizers threaded contingents of individual dancers and then floats, more dancers, floats, onto Broadway. They headed downtown and turned east on St. Marks Place toward Tomkins Square Park. Urban street dance groups are well represented on the list of participants, but too few were in evidence. Where was the stepping, the African drumming and dancing? For the many spectacular and photogenic world dancers and others in performing mode, the street was a stage.

As a barometer of city dance, this parade was encyclopedic, but by no means complete.