More often these days, dances are performed in a environmental setting rather than on a stage inside a theatre. We have so used to quietly listening to a concert or watching a ballet inside a magnificently built theatre, and never realize that this is rather a new setting for enjoying music and dance. Traditionally (hundreds or thousands of years ago), there was no boundary between performer and spectators. Everybody is a participant. And professional dancers and musicians didn’t really existed at the time.
As human society evolves over the past few thousands of years, skills and jobs are becoming more and more specialized, so does music and dance. Slowly dance (or at least part of it) became a profession, and spectators became more and more passive. In fact, jumping up and down to express your joy while watching a dance performance is considered unacceptable behavior.
So dancing in a environmental setting is kind of going back to it’s tradition, except there is still a clear boundary between performers and spectators. Nevertheless, it pulls the audiences so close to dancers, that they receive a heightened experience that not likely to be possible in a theatre. Unlike in a theatre though, there is not a acceptable code of behavior for audience on the street.
Sometime breaking the boundary is very much the same as going back to the tradition.
(Above photos are from Kunst-Stoff dancing on Market St in San Francisco, August 2010. Dancers in the photos are Daiane, Chin-Chin, Daniel)