From the group that brought you a flash mob pillow fight on the Common in the middle of December... The Banditos Misteriosos are back with a new adventure up their collective sleeve: Boston's First Silent Dance Experiment. On this Saturday, February 23rd at 1:00 p.m. tourists and Bostonians walking by the Sam Adams Statue in front of Faneuil Hall will be treated to a unique sight when hundreds of people hit play on their portable mp3 players and begin to dance in unison.

The event is part of the Banditos Misteriosos' ongoing attempt to show Boston its full urban playground potential. The Silent Dance Experiment is open to the public: all you need is a portable mp3 player (or a tech-savy friend to burn it to CD, if you want to go retro) and a desire to boogie. The song can be downloaded from the Banditos website: www.misteriosos.org.

Bostonist managed to catch a rare free moment with Banditos co-founder Ethan Feuer to discuss the Misteriosos nature of the group:

When did the Banditos Misteriosos start?

Banditos officially started in October of 2007.

What was the inspiration?

There was really no direct inspiration. It's not like we started anything groundbreaking. We merely wanted to have fun free events that were a bit out of the ordinary.

Were there events pre-pillow fight?

The pillow fight was the first event. Though the people who got the group running threw everything from dance parties to pillow fight games back in college.

What other groups/events inspire you?

We have no core inspiration, but we definitely do love what some groups are doing out there. We look at Improv Everywhere and like what they are doing. They attempt to transform the typical urban life into something a little less serious, which we think is very important. We can be city-dwellers and still smile and wave to our fellow pedestrians. But we also very much look at the urban playground movement (e.g., Newmindspace and multiple other groups worldwide) and really connect with their idea of taking all a city has to offer for the sake of doing fun, harmless games.

Post contributed by Bailey Triggs. Find out what's to come for the Banditos after the jump!

What is your hope for this year's Banditos activities?

A lot of people think that the city life really revolves around bar culture, and we just want to offer an alternative. It's not our goal to do events and weird people out (though if that happens, that's great) but instead to get people out there, doing fun games that they would otherwise miss out on with people they would otherwise never talk to. It's our mission to have events that are 100% open to the public, that people can get involved in with little effort and prep time. It's not about playing jokes on people, but instead to provide an alternative venue to have fun. We want people to know about things we plan and get excited for them. We might be called "Banditos Misteriosos" but we are quite far from being secretive. The only thing that makes us "mysterious" is that the events we plan are a bit out of the ordinary. But if you want to know what's going on, you merely have to check our website or sign up for our e-mail list.

The pillow fight and dance party are call backs to when everyone went to camp and just had fun doing simple, yet entertaining games. And we should be able to do that now. We live in a city with a great deal of resources, energetic people and wide open spaces, these things should be happening more often.

When it comes down to it, Banditos Misteriosos is just a bunch of people taking the initiative to do things that we all used to do. We are just planning simple ideas and games, and spreading the word. It's basically just us calling up Boston for a play-date.