Having hundreds of people crowd London’s Liverpool Street train station on a Friday evening is hardly that surprising.
However, when these same people suddenly erupt in an a-melodic version of Rick Astley’s 80s hit, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, it seems downright unusual. On April 11, hundreds of Londoners did precisely that. Organisied through Facebook, user Mickey Jones managed to persuade a random collection of people to sing the first line of the song’s chorus at exactly 6 pm.
His instructions were simple: (1) stand near the main arrivals/departures board in the station’s centre (2) look as
‘inconspicuous as possible’ (3) use the board’s time to begin singing and (4) ‘sing loud!’
Welcome to the future of performance spaces.
In 2005 londondance.com reported on Ben Cummings’ ‘Mobile Clubbing’ event, also in Liverpool Street station, where approximately 100 participants gathered and danced to their own MP3 player music.
As the popularity of online social networks grows, so do flash mob participants. In February Robert Bolton organized ‘Great Trafalgar Freeze’ through Facebook, where approximately 1,000 participants stood still for five minutes in Trafalgar Square.
With Pulse readers stationed throughout the world perhaps we too can organize a worldwide Kathak/BN/Odissi/Bollywood flash mob?