VALDOSTA — In movie musicals, New Yorkers often break into song and dance. During the recent fall break, several Valdosta State University students broke into dance in New York’s Central Park. While attending the New York Pro Con (Professional Connections) in New York, 10 VSU Theatre & Dance students stepped away from a full weekend of scheduled activities to perform “Bagged,” a site specific dance event, in the famous park. Led by VSU dance instructors Catherine Schaeffer and Kim Holt, students Kettisha Hollingshead, Makeda Bryce, Lacey Harper, Brittany Lord, Candace Howard, Nicole Summerline, Larae Phillips, Ashley Clark, Lauren Hallford, and Ciera Johnson descended on Central Park for what seemed like an impromptu dance performance. Though an improvisational dance, “Bagged” had been well planned and rehearsed. Schaeffer and Holt choreographed the dance so dancers had a structure for the performance. Using this structure, dancers improvise new moves to incorporate their discovered surroundings as well as people stopping or even walking through the dance. The dancers performed “Bagged” in Drexel Park before going to New York. While the group planned to perform in Central Park, no one else knew they were coming. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the VSU students suddenly broke into dance. “We didn’t ask for permission,” Schaeffer says. “As soon as I asked I knew someone would deny us permission so we didn’t ask for any.” So, shortly before 11 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 17, Schaeffer, Holt and the 10 dancers walked to Central Park. A few blocks before the site, the dancers added costumes of trash bags to their street clothes. The bags symbolized the “baggage that we carry as humans and the garbage we create and dispose of on the planet.” The dancers’ first improvisation came establishing their dance in the selected spot. Several people were playing soccer at the site. Undaunted, the dancers began their dance. The soccer players yielded the field. Throughout the performance, the soccer players watched the dance, as did some of the students’ families who traveled to New York to watch, and several New Yorkers. In a city where people are inundated with unexpected sites and performances, the VSU dancers were impressed and proud their dance stopped New Yorkers in their tracks. The dancers moved around passersby who stopped and those who kept walking. They performed along a bridge and over rocks. “You have to adapt to the environment,” Schaeffer says. “The goal is to use what is there.” “People involuntarily become involved in the dance,” Larae Phillips says. The dancers say they were nervous performing in Central Park, but not necessarily because of the audience or by involving involuntary participants in the dance. “I didn’t want to trip over something like a stick on the ground,” Lacey Harper says. “I didn’t know whether to look at people or not look at people.” Ciera Johnson prepared herself by having no specific expectations for the dance, other than experiencing the event, and adapting to whatever might come her way. Given that some people viewed the song from start to finish, while others viewed a minute or two during the dance, the dancers aren’t sure how many people understood the message of ridding one’s self of life’s garbage. When the dance stopped, save for visiting dancers, the New Yorkers returned to their regularly scheduled lives. Those who stopped moved on. The soccer match resumed. The dancers would have liked to have asked a few people what they thought of the dance. They would have also liked to perform “Bagged” again. But there wasn’t time. Schaeffer, Holt and the 10 dancers had to return to their schedules of shows and workshops at the Pro Con. Like the New Yorkers, when “Bagged” concluded, the dancers returned to the regular beat of their extraordinary day.