Dan Deacon at La Villette Sonique
The great Dan Deacon performed at a free concert at Parc de la Villette in the 20° arrondissement yesterday. It's a huge park surrounding a science museum. Funnily enough, Crow saw Dan Deacon in Providence only a few weeks ago! Anyway, it was, in a word, awesome. The stage was set up in front of a huge, mirrored geode (Dan Deacon: "Can we take a minute to appreciate this huge f—in' shiny ball behind us? Okay!"). He spoke no French whatsoever and so got audience help translating things like "Group Interpretive Dance" (above), "Dance Contest" (below), and "Dance Tunnel" (last photo).
He chose two French guys (grey sweater, left, & backpack guy, being carried, right) to dance. They started to whirl around crazily when shirtless dude, foreground, charged into the circle. He'd been pretty obnoxious before, yelling out things like "On est chaud!" and generally being a douche. But Grey Sweater used Shirtless Douche to his advantage — he picked him up and whirled around with him in his arms! What was Backpack Guy to do? Luckily, Scarlet Shirt came to his rescue and picked him up! Everybody cheered! Then the circle collapsed as we all charged in to dance, too! DANCE PARTY!
Dan Deacon: "Okay so now, I know this sounds crazy, but can we make a path going from that tree to that tree? Just like a path? Do get what I'm saying? [jumps down to arrange it himself] You and you, make a triangle with your hands, like this, and you and you, do the same thing. Okay, you and you go through it and then make a bridge when you get to the end! Okay? Everybody get it? If you speak English and also French, please explain to the people around you how to make a dance tunnel! We are going to go through those trees, to the red port-a-potties, around the trash cans, behind the white tent, and then back to the middle! You can do it! I believe in you! Go, go, go!!!"