Dance O’ Dance moves from studio to Zoom, so you can dance like everyone is watching

If you tune into last week’s episode of Olympia’s own “Dance O’ Dance,” you’ll see within Zoom’s “Brady Bunch”-like boxes a dancer with the head of a unicorn, one hiding his face behind a poop-emoji pillow and another looking at her cellphone as she moves to the music.

“Dance O’ Dance” has been giving locals a place to dance and be seen on TV since 1997. These days, the show is filmed not in a studio at Thurston Community Media but via Zoom from the dancers’ living rooms — rooms in which you’ll see strings of lights, beds, a quilted wall hanging and a family member or housemate interrupting (or adding to?) a performance by diving onto the couch and somersaulting off.

“It’s a remote dance party that exemplifies the beauty of all things Olympia,” said dancer Donna Pallo-Perez, who had appeared on the show a few times over the years and has become a regular on the Zoom edition.

The hour-long program was conceived by Justin Barnabas Wright, who left it in other hands after a decade or so and returned in February, just before efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus closed the TCM studio and stopped in-person dance gatherings of all kinds.

“Every Friday of quarantine, Dance O’ Dance will be your convenient free all-ages dance club,” Wright put it on the Facebook event page.

A free all-ages dance club is pretty much what “Dance O’ Dance” is, anyway, though until this month, it happened only on the first Friday of each month. Now, it’s weekly — as is TCM’s “Karaoke Oly,” also filming Friday nights on Zoom.

“I joined in last month, after not dancing in a while, and it was the most fun,” said Pallo-Perez, who’s worked as a professional dancer and taught dance at South Puget Sound Community College. “The show is a Zoom meeting with a fabulous non-stop playlist. You can dance a song, sit out the next one, and/or do dishes on camera while the music plays.”

The program originally showcased what Wright calls “capital-D dancers,” performing choreographed pieces during the first half of the show before the free dance began.

“It evolved into what the people wanted to do: show up and dance,” he told The Olympian. “It makes some great TV. Over the years, I’ve heard people say, ‘I just can’t take my eyes off it.’ ”

Wright definitely has a sense of humor — he makes money as Jusby the Clown — and though he’s also a dancer who has studied butoh among other forms, he obviously relishes seeing how silly people will get on camera.

Yet he’s also serious about the importance of the show’s interactivity and unpredictability. When it was filmed in the studio, “Dance O’ Dance” aired live. Though the Zoom version is lightly edited and uploaded later, the spirit of live TV remains.

“Instead of creating an art product, we are creating space for an experience of becoming art,” he said.

In its heyday, the show attracted crowds of 100 or so, all packed into the studio at what was then called Thurston Community Television. Recent episodes have had just a handful, though Wright welcomes more.

While he’d prefer to be in the studio when it’s safe to do so, he said that dancing on Zoom has its advantages.

“Zoom connects us in delightful and quirky ways,” he said. “We are all definitely looking at one another and ourselves.”

‘Dance O’ Dance’

• What: The 23-year-old show on Thurston Community Media has temporarily transformed from a monthly program filmed in studio to a weekly one made via Zoom.
• Dance: Anyone ready to dance and willing to appear on TV is welcome to join the Zoom dance from 9 to 10 p.m. Friday. The meeting ID is 875 038 173, and the password is 070707.
• Watch: Episodes debut on YouTube the Monday after filming and air a week later on Thurston Community Media broadcast channels at 10 p.m. Monday, 1 a.m. Wednesday and 8 p.m. Friday and at http://www.tcmedia.org.
• More information: http://www.facebook.com/danceodance/, jusbytheclown@gmail.com
• Also: Want to try Zoom karaoke, too? (Warning: There’s a delay on Zoom, so the words won’t be in sync with the backing track, no matter how good a singer you are.) “Karaoke Oly,” which also airs on YouTube and TCM, is also filming weekly on Zoom from 8 to 9 p.m. Friday in the same Zoom room. http://www.facebook.com/groups/73230153495/