Perhaps as expected, Wayne Hazzard and Dudley Flores are easy to excite when it comes to talking about dance.
The dynamic duo behind the annual Bay Area Dance Week festival (Fri/24-May 3), Hazzard and Flores have been dancing and supporting the Bay Area dance scene for a combined 65+ years. They each are effusive about the diversity and inclusivity of the local dance community, which is the largest per capita center for dance in the United States. Hazzard is the executive director of Dancers’ Group, which has been producing BADW since its inception in 1998, and Flores is the charismatic Rhythm & Motion managing and artistic director and choreographer of One Dance, which kicks off the festival Fri/24. Hazzard has stayed in the Bay Area since moving here from Southern California to dance and dance is why San Francisco native Flores never left.
“A roommate took me to a tap class and I was hooked,” recalls Hazzard. “I grew up only seeing dance on TV or in the movies. I was amazed.” In 1980 he began getting dance work in San Francisco, eventually going on to dance in companies like SF Moving Company, Ed Mock and Dancers, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and Joe Goode Performance Group, among others. While working also as a teacher, he gradually stepped in to handle administrative tasks, bringing his affinity for artists into the role. He became executive director of Dancers’ Group in 1989, where he has been central to fulfilling the organization’s mission “to amplify, strengthen, and unify the dance community by promoting the visibility and viability of dance” through numerous platforms.
Modeled after National Dance Week and imbued with the innovative and inclusive spirit of the Bay Area, BADW features dance organizations throughout the region opening their doors to the public, and inviting them to partake in free dance classes, rehearsals, performances, and other gatherings. Whether it’s hip hop, salsa, Bhangra, aerial, folk, modern, Bollywood, ballet, pole, or West African dance, BADW welcomes participants of all backgrounds, abilities, ages and experience levels. Typically drawing more than 2500 artists and 20,000 attendees annually, BADW is an opportunity for everyone to support and enjoy the vibrant Bay Area dance community.
The festival kicks off with One Dance noon on Fri/24 at Jesse Square on Mission Street across from Yerba Buena Gardens. Always a crowd favorite, One Dance is a participatory group dance that anyone can learn beforehand here. Led by Flores, this year’s One Dance is dedicated to joy. “I’m always wanting to find something that inspires people,” says Flores. Performed flash mob style, One Dance welcomes older dancers, younger dancers, beginners, and experienced folks to get in on the fun together. Flores explains, “One Dance is low pressure, but high community.”
Though he danced some in high school, Flores didn’t become fully immersed until he happened into a Rhythm & Motion class at the Koret Center while a biology major at University of San Francisco. He was an instant fan of the high energy dance-based workout and in 2000 trained to become a Rhythm & Motion instructor. Meanwhile, he pursued a prolific commercial and contemporary dance career, working with companies like Printz Dance Project, Janice Garrett and Dancers, Robert Moses’ KIN and ODC. Now retired from his performance career, as R&M’s Director, Flores continues the legacy of the organization’s beloved founder, Consuelo Faust, who passed away in 2025.
Flores says, “For this year’s One Dance I decided, let’s just have fun and enjoy being in our bodies in a joyful space. If we can do that we can be fueled for whatever we need to do that day, that week, that month. I think this connects us to our bodies and ourselves.”
Some other highlights of the festival include What’s Up!?! UpSwing Aerial Dance and student performance, LOVING THE AIR, a Bhangra fundamentals class with Rooted Bhangra, Mexican Folkloric, K-Pop, and international folk dance, Indian classical, and Bollywood performances and classes at Downtown Dance! in Fremont, beginner folklórico basics classes at Florecer Dance Studios in San Jose, a performance by Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, free yoga and pre-ballet classes for kids at various locations, and still more events being added throughout April.
Asked about her apparatus-based dance class at Zaccho Dance Theater in San Francisco’s Bay View district, FLYAWAY Productions Artistic Director Jo Kreiter says “I love teaching for BADW and offering people a chance to dance off the ground for a brief moment of liberation.” Known for her site specific justice driven work, Kreiter makes choreography that is typically suspended off the ground, in harnesses, hoops and on other hanging objects.
Since 2007, Artistic Director Mark Foehringer of Mark Foehringer Dance Project|SF has been producing Dancing in the Park SF as part of BADW, an annual outdoor admission free dance performance at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell. A great way to enjoy both the outdoors and dance, this year’s Dancing in the Park, Sat/25, will feature 20 Bay Area groups in an afternoon of diverse programming. “I love big community projects and Dancing in the Park is as community as you can get,” says Foehringer. “The Bay Area is full of so many exciting perspectives and artistic voices.”
It’s easy to drop names of the various dance icons who have called the Bay Area their home, starting perhaps most obviously with Isadora Duncan, the San Francisco born American pioneer of modern contemporary dance. Steeped in both tradition and innovation, the local dance scene is home to the oldest professional ballet company in the US (San Francisco Ballet), and is the birthplace of various hip-hop styles (roboting and poppin’, to name just two) as well as numerous and fabulously diverse annual festivals.
There are artists who dance off the ground, in site specific locations, in fully appointed theaters, on college and university campuses, at dance schools and studios, and in traditional and experimental theater venues in every county. Due in part to an inherent collaborative spirit as well as rapidly dwindling financial resources for the arts, artists are collaborating more frequently to create even more opportunities for audiences. “There’s a lot of dance everywhere, in the street, at festivals, in the mall. It’s more accessible,” says Flores
Institutions of higher education have long-fed the local professional dance scene, even now as the eco-system is changing with the dissolution of programming at places like Mills College and Sonoma State University. Vibrant programs continue to thrive at Stanford, Saint Mary’s College, San Jose State University, UC Berkeley, SF City College and elsewhere, providing a hub for exchange between academia and the community. Hazzard, reflecting on the evolution of local dance during the 1980s and ’90s, says, “More than any place in the country, those working in cultural forms were working in universities, creating their own communities that were mixing with contemporary communities, to form the kind of hybridity that continues to evolve today.”
Similarly the beautiful Bay Area outdoors have always attracted people who prioritize physical activities and recreation, with a pioneer curiosity for new modalities. “You’re 20 minutes away from a beach, hiking trails, redwoods, and two hours from snow. The activity and physicalness of the Bay Area is like nowhere else,” says Hazzard. The proliferation of yoga, pilates, barre classes, and every other variety of workout puts a lot of people in proximity to dance and dancers. “If you are someone who has a physical practice,” Hazzard adds, “It’s easy to relate some form of dance to your own ways of being physical.”
What’s the best way to enjoy the BADW Festival? Flores advises making it part of your plans, pointing out that wherever you’re headed, there’s likely to be some dance nearby. It’s an opportunity to think outside the box, too. According to Hazzard, “There are tons of new forms being investigated from aerial to drag and even aerial in drag. Check out the disabled dance community and discover how dance breaks down the idea that you have to be a certain person or body to move.”
It’s a mission of love and reciprocity that keeps Hazzard and Flores generating opportunities for folks to come together every year in this beloved 10-day celebration of community and dance. ”I love what I do. I’m a proud San Franciscan and I want to do my part to keep things going. Dance helped me when I didn’t have enough or when I didn’t have community. It means a lot to me and so I want to carry it forward.” says Flores. They’re also fueled by the urgency of our divisive times. “If we’re not seen and we don’t come together we won’t have those leveraged moments to find humanity,” says Hazzard. BADW is designed to generate joy and build connections. So, go check out BADW and may you dance joyfully in community with empowerment and hope.
BAY AREA DANCE WEEK Fri/24-May 3, various locations throughout the Bay Area. More info here.
