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Scientist Tries to Crowd-Surf at a Handel Concert

by Nuzha Nuseibeh

Things got a little awkward for Dr. David Glowacki after the American scientist tried to crowd-surf at a Handel concert at the Bristol Old Vic in England...and promptly got ejected by all other members of the audience. The theoretical chemist apparently got a little too into Handel's Messiah (who wouldn't, eh?). “He got very over-excited,” Tom Morris, the artistic director who launched the Bristol Proms, told The Independent. “It was the first eviction of a classical concert audience member by another member we’ve found since the 18th century.”

This is how it happened: as the crescendo of the “Hallelujah Chorus” began increase, Dr. Glowacki started moving from side to side. He raised his arms. He began to whoop. Finally, after a few moments, he went for it: the fated crowd-surf. His fellow audience members were not amused. Apparently annoyed by Dr. Glowacki's enthusiasm, the crowd violently spat him out of the building almost instantly. "David was investigating what the nature of the rules are using the skills that make him an extraordinary scientist — and for some in the audience, a slightly irritating one,” Morris said.To be fair to Dr. Glowacki, the concert wasn't your run-of-the-mill classical shindig. It was part of a week-long classical music festival called the Bristol Proms, which aim to be accessible and innovative. In fact, just before Dr. Glowacki got too, er, physical, the music director told the audience to feel free to "clap and whoop" and even form a mosh pit. Clearly, Glowacki took it just a little too far.

In response, the Bristol Proms have had to explicitly ban crowd-surfing, though Morris has been quick to say that Dr. Glowacki is still welcome any time. “I think it was a good thing this happened. Dr Glowacki is an eccentric and a genius and only a very few people are likely to react to the music the way he did but it shows it is an environment in which unexpected things can happen," the director said.

But he added: "The only caveat I would add is that it really is about the music and maybe in some ways his reaction wasn’t about the music but about testing how far he could push his behaviour based on the relaxed ethos."

The American scientist, who happens to be the creator of danceroom spectroscopy, seems to be fed up with the whole scene, though. "Classical music, trying to seem cool and less stuffy, reeks of some sort of fossilised art form undergoing a midlife crisis,” the scientist told The Telegraph. He added:

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 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.

Right on, dude. Who ever said scientists were nerdy?