The Joyful Highway 101 Overpass Dancer Who Literally Performs With His Heart on His Sleeve

By way of a listener’s question, KQED News sought out the locally infamous dancer who performs with a big red heart on the 18th Street pedestrian overpass over Highway 101 in San Francisco where commuters are always stuck in traffic during rush hour. The dancer, whose name is JaVonne Hatfield, just really enjoys dancing and wants to share his joy with the world. With his heart literally and figuratively on his sleeve.

I love to make people happy and change people’s perspective. Growing up my mother always like instilled with me the arts. She put me and church where we have like musicals and plays. In church we called it praise dance. What you do is you paint your face white and you mime to inspirational music gospel music. …This particular location is like a gateway in and out of San Francisco. Everyone is stuck in back-to-back traffic, so my thing was, how can I be positive about the situation not only for myself, but for everyone else around. I feel like this euphoric feeling that I’m doing something to give back to the world around me.