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While there are many places you’d expect a mosh pit to break out, in the middle of a classical music concert isn’t one of them. That’s why a US scientist was ejected from a performance at England’s Bristol Old Vic. During a performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” the Old Vic’s artistic director invited audience members to come to the front with their drinks and ‘clap or whoop when you like, and no shushing other people.” Dr. David Glowacki, a Research Fellow at the Royal Society and visiting professor at Stanford University, got very excited by the “Hallelujah Chorus” (yeah, you know the one, even if you hate classical), and began “lurching from side-to-side” with his hands raised, then attempted to crowd surf.
The other audience members were not as excited and physically threw him out of the venue. “He got very over-excited,” Old Vic artistic director Tom Morris told the Independent. Dr. Glowacki, for his part, is unapologetic, accusing the audience of hypocrisy:
“Classical music, trying to seem cool and less stuffy, reeks of some sort of fossilised art form undergoing a midlife crisis,” the expert in non-equilibrium molecular reaction dynamics, who is a visiting scientist at Stanford University, said. “Witness what happened to me when I started cheering with a 30-strong chorus shouting ‘praise God’ two metres from my face: I get physically assaulted, knocked down to the floor and forcibly dragged out by two classical vigilantes. “Neither the bourgeoisie audience nor their curators (eg Tom Morris) really believe what they say. You’re free to behave as you like, and it’s comforting to think that you have that freedom, but it’s only available to you so long as you behave correctly.”
He also denied that he was drunk when attempting to crowd-surf. “This may be a consequence of me being American, but I can quite easily be provocative without the need to be inebriated.”
