A friend texted me just before the start of the Champions League Final — someone gave him last minute tickets to a performance of David Lang’s Crowd Out, did I want to go? I ran out the door.
“Crowd Out” was inspired by the stadium noise at a football match; it involves dozens (hundreds?) of performers located throughout the crowd. 1000 people participated in the performance above; it was hard to get a sense of their numbers in Disney Hall. Sitting amongst them gave you a sense of being not just surrounded by but absorbed in a social body voicing its own aural script — the sum of so very many parts. The experience at Walt Disney Hall was thrilling — the concert hall’s seating is very close to stadium-seating in its layout. You are encircled by a crowd-chorus. The lyrics cycle through expressions of loneliness. The composition manages to achieve the sense of a stadium crowd — it has rhythms very much like that of a football match. It only runs the length of a half, however — I was back home in time for the second half of the final. That second half wasn’t nearly as thrilling as this performance. Honestly, this is one of the strongest sports-related performances I’ve ever, ever seen.
The video above is from its premier in Birmingham — experiencing this in a public space like that would be astonishingly beautiful and moving.
The Sport Spectacle 