It’s a Tuesday evening, just before sunset, and I am in a meadow thrashing an air guitar with a dozen strangers in Griffith Park.
We take the lyrics to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” literally as we gyrate and bend to the song’s iconic guitar solo, which lasts almost 45 seconds. Huffing and puffing, we leave the meadow, laughing together at the beautiful end of the hourlong “silent disco” hike we completed along one of the park’s dirt trails.
I stay for an extra 45 minutes, talking to two other dancers whom I hope become future friends — and that we all dance together again soon.
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That night, I participated in Dance Quest’s silent disco hike, a new way to experience Griffith Park where participants shimmy and shake on a trail alongside L.A. improviser and comedian Kristen Smith.
For a suggested donation of up to $25 — Smith emphasizes that no one will be turned away for lack of funds — participants don headphones and hike as they listen to a playlist that Smith has curated. That Tuesday night’s playlist included Donna Summer, Madonna and Carly Rae Jepsen (whom Smith unapologetically stans).
Smith plans to host at least two night hikes a month, but will schedule more if those events sell out. She’s taking a brief pause, though, because her wife gave birth to their second child last Thursday.
Dance Quest leader Kristen Smith pumps her fists in the air on an overlook along a trail in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
I’m kind of an experiential purist when it comes to hiking — never headphones, never music. I love putting my phone away and just being there with the trees and bees. I couldn’t help but wonder: Would this silent disco ruin or enhance the outdoors experience?
I was pleasantly surprised by the answer, but I think it largely depends on who leads the dancing.
Smith, a tribal member of the Chickasaw Nation who identifies as two spirit and uses she/they pronouns, said they were inspired to start Dance Quest while on a trip to Scotland in 2024 to celebrate their mother’s 70th birthday.
Kristen Smith of Dance Quest leads hikers on a silent disco trek through Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
While out and about, Smith and her mom spotted Guru Dudu, a character created by Melbourne-based performer David Naylor, leading a silent disco through the streets of Edinburgh.
“That looks fun,” Smith’s mom said.
They both signed up for a tour, led by Dudu, who wore a purple sequin jumpsuit.
“We danced through the very crowded streets of Edinburgh, and it was the most fun I’d had in such a long time,” Smith said.
L.A. artist Heidi Neilson, center, dances alongside other silent disco hikers in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Smith, who’d spent years performing on stages throughout L.A., had been stuck inside and away from people for much of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In summer 2021, just as vaccines were becoming available and it was becoming safer to gather with groups indoors, Smith was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Smith’s summer was soon full of surgeries and tests until they started chemotherapy that September, receiving a dose every three weeks until early 2022, when their doctors switched Smith to chemotherapy every three months.
Smith’s treatment was going well, but that didn’t mean an immediate return to normalcy was on the horizon. Her doctors said Smith and her family needed to assume Smith’s COVID-19 vaccine didn’t give her immunity to the virus.
As Smith watched her friends return to a semblance of their pre-pandemic lives, she worked inside at her Nickelodeon job, grateful for health insurance and employment in the entertainment industry, but missed the joy and connection that comes with performing.
Kristen Smith of Dance Quest is surrounded by silent disco dancers in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Smith kept wondering how they could find a way to remain active and connect with others. Plus, being outside remains the safest option for Smith to be around people, as the type of cancer they have is not considered curable and is managed like a chronic illness.
“I know that one of the things that I offer to the world is joy and sparkly effervescence,” Smith said. “I was like, ‘What can I do to be my own boss, is something that’s of service to people in this time of darkness and is also good for me as well?’”
During the silent disco in Edinburgh, Smith realized as they danced alongside others that they felt like they were performing and letting go in a way they hadn’t been able to do in a long time. “When we finished, I was like, ‘I can do this,’” Smith said.
Smith told their mentor at Nickelodeon about their idea to start Dance Quest and they immediately encouraged them to give it a shot. Smith bought the equipment the next week and launched Dance Quest, her company that hosts the silent disco hikes, earlier this year. After doing a test run with friends and family, they started hosting events in the park.
When I arrived to the silent disco, I quickly met my fellow dancers, a welcoming group of people ages 5 and older. I liked that I could adjust the volume on my headphones rather than listen to music all at the same volume.
Holly Gray, an L.A. event planner, throws her arms in the air alongside other dancers in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
We took a wide dirt path in the park that’s not as popular as other routes, which allowed us to spread out and really do whatever we wanted. I quickly realized this was primarily going to be a lot of frolicking to a good beat, which was exactly what I wanted.
Along the way, Smith pointed out invasive plants like black mustard and native plants and animals that live in the park. Whenever a hiker headed our way, we made a tunnel of “spirit fingers” for them to pass through, which I detected 95% of people actually enjoyed. In today’s fast-paced and often negatively focused world, it’s kind of nice to turn a corner and find strangers cheering for you.
Smith, who taught improv to children, teenagers and business professionals, will not force participants to dance. That isn’t the purpose of Dance Quest.
Kristen Smith of Dance Quest, center, leads two children along a dirt path in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Rather, it’s to find joy with others and escape the harsh political environment that queer and BIPOC people face on a daily basis.
“When you put on the headphones, you forget how you look, and hopefully I provide a no-pressure environment where, however your body tells you to move, you move that way,” Smith said. “And there’s strength in numbers with the silent disco.”
3 things to do
Families play volleyball at an L.A. County overnight camping event at a local park.
(Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation)
1. Camp with family and friends around L.A. Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation will host family campouts on weekends in July and August at five of its parks. That includes campouts at Castaic Lake Recreation Area at 6 p.m. Friday; Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas at 6 p.m. Friday; Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area at 6 p.m. July 17; and 6 p.m. July 24 at Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area. Those parks, along with Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, will host additional family campouts in August. General admission is $15. Children age 13 and younger are free. To register, visit anc.apm.activecommunities.com.
2. Clear out streambeds in L.A. Friends of Griffith Park needs volunteers from 8:30 to 11 a.m. Saturday in the park’s Fern Dell hiking area. Participants will clean streambeds and trails, yanking weeds and restoring habitat. Learn more at friendsofgriffithpark.org.
3. Kayak the L.A. River near Van Nuys L.A. River Expeditions will host a two-hour kayak tour at multiple times Saturday through the Sepulveda Basin, a lush area of the Los Angeles River. Paddlers will move through the tree-lined, mud-packed riverbanks, observing local fish and birds. Trips are at 9 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Tickets are $53.74. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
Mary Saba Tehran takes part in a Mindful Archery class at the Woodley Park Archery Range in Van Nuys.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Times staff writer Deborah Vankin recently learned via a bow and arrow the importance and freedom that can come with literally letting go. Vankin wrote about her experiencing at Mindful Archery, a course led by spiritual counselor and archer Angie Fadel at Woodley Park Archery Range in Van Nuys. Fadel said her goal is to help female and BIPOC participants release something holding them back or take aim at a goal. “An archery range can be a very white, male-dominated space,” she said. “And the stance, with a bow and arrow in your hand, shooting — it’s very male. And [men] don’t have any problem, most of the time, taking up space. So it is a practice to remind ourselves, as a queer woman, a trans person, nonbinary person, anybody that’s kind of othered in our society, to be able to take up space. To adopt a power stance and be, like, ‘I’m allowed to be here.’”
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Great news! State lawmakers have selected the California State Library park pass to receive ongoing funding in future budget cycles. Previously, lawmakers had to approve funding every year for the program to be added into the state’s budget, according to the California State Parks Foundation. This development means Californians will be able to check out a state parks pass for free at their local library for the foreseeable future, unless a governor or the Legislature announces otherwise. In L.A. County, participating parks include the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, Leo Carrillo State Park, L.A. State Historic Park and Malibu Creek State Park. You can find out which library near you offers the pass by visiting this interactive map. Have fun out there!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
The BBC star finds it ‘heart-breaking’ that her great x3 grandfather had such a difficult start in life – and was later declared ‘destitute’.
Zoe Ball was stunned by the ‘devastating’ discoveries she made during Who Do You Are?(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC / Wall to Wall Media Ltd / Stephen Perry)
Zoe Ball was famously the top-earning presenter at the BBC, earning a high of £1.4million a year as host of the Radio 2 Breakfast show back in 2021. But in the new series of Who Do You Think You Are?, the radio star discovers that her great x3 grandfather James Temby, a Cornish miner, was deported from Guernsey as a young father for being “destitute”.
He and other members of the family, who had travelled there to start a new life with the promise of work in the granite quarries, were ordered out after two years. And this came after he’d already had a particularly tough start in life – spending six weeks in Bodmin jail as an illegitimate two-year-old after his single mother Julia was locked up for six weeks in 1851 for an “assault” an another woman.
On hearing how the pair of them would have spent time in the pitch black at the Cornish reform prison, which restricted access to light in order to encourage better behaviour from inmates, Zoe is horrified. “It’s heart-breaking isn’t it?” she says.
Standing in the tiny, draughty cell – which could have been the very one where her ancestors were incarcerated – she also learns that the prison was silent, and so all speaking was banned, and that the inmates also had their heads shaved to prevent lice.
Zoe gasps: “That’s tough living isn’t it? It’s pretty devastating to think of a two-year old living in these conditions. Must have been terrifying for both of them.”
Jess Marlton, general manager of The Bodmin Jail which is now a hotel and museum, agrees: “Trying to keep a two-year-old quiet I should think was quite a challenge.” But she explained: “There was nowhere else for him to go and no other means to support him.”
Zoe stays the night in one of the converted cells and admits she had to “sleep with the light on”. Afterwards there is happier news when she discovers that James went on to marry her great x3 grandmother Mary Ann at the age of 19 and, despite the setback in Guernsey, he and his family fared better once they returned to England. They were initially sent to Plymouth in 1869 but by 1875 had moved 400 miles north to County Durham, which is where Zoe’s late mother Julia grew up.
James successfully secured work in the coal mines and they also ran a greengrocers shop. By the time he died 40 years later, at the age of 73, he was said to be held in the “highest esteem” by the local community. Shown a picture of the shop, based in Hunwick, Zoe says of Mary Ann: “There she is, she’s got her pinny on ready to work. It’s so wonderful to see their faces.” The couple had five children who all went on to marry.
Zoe – who’d speculated at the start of the film that she was descended from “a long line of wrong ’uns” – is thrilled to see that James was “respected in the end”. She admires the “strength and resilience” he showed in moving around to find work and support his family and feels she was actually “quite wrong” about the family history journey she’d expected to go on.
Zoe, 55, also tells the programme that she was brought up by her dad, former TV presenter Johnny Ball, from the age of two when her parents divorced, and didn’t have any contact with Julia for 14 years – which was “pretty tough”. Having fully reconciled with her mother in her later teenage years, she says that Julia’s death, in 2024, made her take a long hard look at her own life. “It really made me step back and reevaluate what’s important,” she explained. Speaking of her 15-year-old daughter, Nelly, she said “I really just want to be mum and be around for her, before she’s grown up and off into the big wide world like her brother.”
In the programme the former Radio 2 breakfast star also learns that her impoverished maternal grandmother was a serial fantasist who had “delusions of grandeur”and was sent to a mental hospital.
Margaret ‘Peggy’ Minto was committed for acute mania after being put on trial for shoplifting. Poor Peggy’s fantasies continued even while she was undergoing treatment, which included electroconvulsive therapy – an electric current passed through the brain.
Zoe’s only regret is that Julia did not live long enough to find out the fascinating details of their shared ancestry. “It’s been hard to do this without Mum,” she sighed. “I want to ring her up – I know she’d be really chuffed.”
– Zoe Ball’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? airs on BBC1, May 26 at 9pm.
It’s not merely trendy psychologizing to salute the qualities of a sturdy tree: a humbling reminder of time’s immensity, but also a living embodiment of shelter, change and growth. Leave it, then, to a massive gingko on the grounds of a medieval German town’s college to cosmically center the three-pronged, multi-generational character study “Silent Friend” from Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi.
Enyedi, from her mesmeric, calling-card period lark “My Twentieth Century” to the eccentric love story “On Body and Soul,” has always been preoccupied with that realm in which the everyday meets the all-seeing and possibility is awakened. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she’d give a starring role to a 200-year-old tree, which just may inspire the needed answers. And why not? Our living, “breathing,” sky-reaching neighbors have considerable communication skills with each other.
Our entryway is a modern day neuroscientist played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai (and called Tony), who arrives at the University of Marburg as a visiting professor ready to further his groundbreaking research into the mysteries of infant brain development. The gig becomes a lonely endeavor, however, when the pandemic hits and he’s confined to a depopulated campus, sent unwillingly into a kind of monkhood.
It’s as if the nearby natural world, photographed by Gergely Pálos and edited by Károly Szalai, was just waiting for such a solitary moment to draw Tony’s undivided attention into the prospect of green intelligence.
In tandem, Enyedi transports us to 1908 to meet aspiring botanist Grete (Luna Wedler), the university’s first female student, subjected to cruelly patronizing treatment by smug male elders, yet driven to see plants anew when introduced to the light-capturing rigor of photography. The movie’s third woven-in protagonist is a wide-eyed, resourceful farm boy, Hannes (Enzo Brumm), in 1972. While his fellow students spark to the winds of political change and sexual freedom, he becomes fixated on what a lone geranium, imaginatively monitored on its windowsill, might have to convey if given the chance.
The fluid, idiosyncratic charm of “Silent Friend” — which never feels like two and a half hours — is in Enyedi’s heartfelt belief that curiosity is simply a garden that grows progress. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that this veteran dreamweaver’s key cast are entrancing, inviting specimens themselves, led by an inner glow of compassion in Leung that feels like its own natural energy source. When his character contacts Léa Seydoux’s French plant expert, it becomes almost too much rapturously intelligent star wattage for one quietly poetic movie, even if these god-tier actors are just zooming and talking shop.
Hardly anything is overdone here and, in one essential way, Enyedi is also making the case for movies themselves as phenomena to protect and treasure: ecosystems of light, texture, wonder and nourishment. Visually, the film toggles between intimate 35mm black-and-white, grainy 16mm color and multi-purpose digital cameras that visually represent distinct eras. Needless to say, that gingko tree is sublime and majestic in all of them.
‘Silent Friend’
In German and English, with subtitles
Not rated
Running time: 2 hours, 27 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, May 15 at Laemmle Royal and AMC Burbank Town Center 8
