Crowd Control with Dan Deacon

DSC03684, originally uploaded by sevensixfive.

Dan Deacon at Whartscape. This was a great (if too short) show. The stuff he does with crowd dynamics is amazing. As this article points out, there's this tension between the way he plays on the ground, off the stage, and the crowd's desire to be all up in his face. The games and little organized routines that he kind of tricks the crowd into playing have the effect of getting them involved with each other instead of just him.

But he's totally orchestrating the whole thing. When I took this photo, he had set up a system where people formed a long, Soul Train style line, and others would dance down the line of people, stopping at the end to form the next row. The line had consumed two thirds of the crowd, and there was no one around Dan but other photographers.

A second after I took this, Dan walked around to the other side of the table, glanced at the line, held his hand up to the sky and finished singing the chorus ... then he hit a button on his gear, slamming a breakbeat into place that dissolved the entire crowd into a freeform dancing mass again.

I'm also totally fascinated by the home-tweaked equipment he's got here, patched together with color-coded cords.