If you can move your body, you can dance. That’s the philosophy of Zheng Wang, dancer, choreographer, and founder and Artistic Director of Dare to Dance Seattle, an organization that has produced an average of one show per year since 2010 by focusing on community and providing opportunities for non-professional dancers to perform on stage. Dare to Dance Seattle emerged circuitously out of Wang’s experiences with Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and with flash mobs in general.
“In 2009, just for fun, I learned the ‘Thriller’ dance through the organization Thrill the World, which coordinates worldwide simultaneous ‘Thriller’ dance every Halloween,” Wang said. “Then in 2010, I started doing flash mob dances with One Degree Events.”
Both were transformative.
“What I learned was: we can still participate in dance even if we’re not trained dancers,” Wang enthused. “The flash mob events provided a rare and free opportunity for people like me to discover the joy of dance.”
When Wang refers to people like himself, he means people who did not dance during their youth.
“In college, my decidedly more sophisticated classmates tried to teach me how to dance freestyle at a party,” he said. “Their conclusion was: ‘You look weird when you dance.’”
Wang says that their assessment still haunts him to this day.
“Up until my 30s, I had not learned a single dance routine,” he admitted. “So I was probably the last person you would expect to start a dance organization.”
And yet, the flash mobs provided Wang with both emotional resonance and communal experience.
“Dance is a very direct, very visceral way of expressing emotions,” he explained. “Performing a dance as part of a group is a soul-nurturing and bonding experience, just like playing team sports.”
Wang wanted to provide more of these opportunities to the community.
“In today’s society, people think of dance as this highly-skilled pursuit with a high threshold of entry, especially for adults,” he said. “But human history is full of examples of dance being used for rituals, courtship, and community-building.”
As a self-taught filmmaker and writer, Wang strives to democratize creativity, and part of that also entails dismantling barriers about the practice of choreography.
“People might think of choreographers as these highly-trained enigmatic figures,” he ventured. “We welcome anyone to choreograph, as long as we can fit the piece into the show, and we give almost complete creative freedom to choreographers.”
This openness started with Wang’s first flash mob experiences. He wondered whether the community could choreograph and perform an original dance show together, even if most of them were not professional dancers. After getting enough participants on-board, he booked a venue. The first Dare to Dance show was created in seven weeks. Eventually, it became a brand and a non-profit experience.
Every Dare to Dance performance has a place in Wang’s heart, but Dare to Dance 9: Wonderland stands out.
“The MiYoung Margolis Dance Company performed a contemporary Korean piece titled The Tree, Seo-nang Goddess,” he recounted. “Not only was it absolutely stunning, but I also felt particularly proud, because MiYoung had formed her dance company with dancers she met at Dare to Dance 7 and 8.”
Dare to Dance 9 also included another special memory, which included two of their “homegrown” choreographers, Sandy Flores and Richard Knowles.
“[They] teamed up to create a dance that told a love story through three distinct moments in time,” Wang remembered. “There was not a dry eye in the house!”
The pull of drama onstage also hearkens to Wang’s history in the theatre.
“During the early years of Dare to Dance, I was also an active playwright with SIS Productions,” he said. “A few years ago, when I thought about picking it back up, one of my ideas was a musical.”
Eventually, he began to consider a “dancical” — or “a full play where people break into dancing, instead of singing.” Research revealed almost no examples of this format, and Wang decided to tread into new waters.
“I found it exciting to essentially marry a play with a dance show,” he said. “I wrote the script, and it ended up very ambitious and unapologetically queer.”
After four months of rehearsal for Unstoppable: A Queer Dancical, Wang was pleased with the audience response.
“The icing on the cake came toward the end of 2024, when the show was nominated for three Gregory Awards and one BroadwayWorld Seattle Award,” he said. “I believe ‘dancical’ is a format with incredible potential, because dance is such a natural vehicle to convey strong emotions.”
Last November, Wang produced Dare to Dance 14. Through the theme of being brave, Wang sought to bring positivity to the season.
“Dare to Dance 14 was super-special because it took place on the weekend after the 2024 presidential election.” he said. “The show took shape as a fitting commentary on the emotional rollercoaster we had been experiencing for several years due to the political and social climate.”
Ultimately, the theme and timing served each other.
“After the election, we saw that many people in our community were hurting,” Wang said, “so we offered $10 tickets to encourage people to join us. Altogether, we had more than 80 dancers and over 400 audience members sharing in this celebration of bravery and joy.”
Dare to Dance Seattle operates on a volunteer-based model, which allows Wang to mount shows without relying on major donations, but it can be difficult. He is now working with his Administrative Director, Cindy Jacobs, to attract more donations and grants.
Next up, Wang is writing and directing a new dancical with the Dare to Dance team.
“Dance With Me is an intimate story that delves into the intricate dynamics of a parental relationship,” he said. “It was inspired by my own experience when I went back to China to sort through my late parents’ belongings.”
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Dare to Dance: Dance with Me runs from August 1 to 23 at Theatre Off Jackson (409 7th Ave. S, Seattle) in the Chinatown-International District.
