Street performers are fading away just us the sparrows in our city. What William Shakespeare said once all the world’s a stage and we are merely actors is no longer true. An actor is seen only on stage and of late there is a common ideology that one has to perform on stage or upload a video on any social networking site to become famous.However, there is a subtle change in the street performance in our country. With the increase in the number of flash mobs that are happening all over India, it has brought a new ray of light for street performance. Some dance to remember and some dance to forget, but these performers dance to entertain. Street performers dance to the latest tunes in groups in various parts of the city. These groups perform various acts at malls, busy streets and crowded places. They have no particular reason for their performance; in fact it is done just to entertain the gathering. Vikram who organised the latest flash mob in our city said, “We did this to entertain the crowd and also remind them about the various mishaps that one can witness in our city. We went with the theme women safety, where we performed various acts of crimes and issues women face in our society.” A flash mob is defined as a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, to perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, artistic expression. Flash mobs are generally applied to events such as protests, commercial advertisements, and publicity stunts.The first flash mob was seen in Manhattan by Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper’s Magazine, on June 3, 2003, at Macy’s department store. The flash mob had over 130 volunteers who gathered at the ninth floor of the store to promote a rug company.It proved to be an effective tool for mass communication. Soon many companies and organisations followed this method to communicate to the public. It is safe to say that flash mob generated from the United States of America and slowly spread across the world as a street performance. After the latest chick-flick Friends with Benefits the youth of India developed a liking towards this form of act after watching few scenes in the movie. The first successful flash mob in India was conducted in Mumbai at the VT station on November 27, where over 200 volunteers danced to the title song of Rang De Basanti. The flash mob was later joined by the commuters. Within days the whole of India witnessed the recordings of this flash mob on social networking sites.After the successful attempt by Mumbai, Pune witnessed a flash mob of its own but this time it was for a cause India Against Terrorism. This was considered to be the first perfect flash mob in India as locals termed it after witnessing the Mob at Mumbai.The garden city took things a bit differently apart from the flash mobs that happened time and again in smaller groups. Bangalore was the first city in India to host a freeze mob. Freeze mob is an act of standing still in a position which tells a story. Recently there were freeze mobs at Brigade Road and Garuda Mall. It was performed by over 60 volunteers and was witnessed by over a hundred people.Binoy who witnessed the freeze mob said, “ I had never seen anything like this before. Initially I was curious to see, why people weren’t moving. Then I found so many people in various positions depicting issues in our city. This was amazing and within seconds this caught a lot of attention. I am still surprised that ‘standing still’ can grab so many people’s attention.”When the freeze mob took place at Brigade Road, the police started to interfere and began to clear the crowd. A constable said, “We don’t want any acts like this. It has gathered too many people, and is also slowing down traffic. It is public disturbance.” For few it maybe public disturbance and for few its street performance but it is powerful nonetheless.
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