Following an exciting cello concerto last Tuesday evening, Roger Duesburg of Verona, Wisconsin, began to forcefully and exuberantly beat his hands against one another in a perplexing display of appreciation for the performance. Duesburg, an avid classical music listener, was so overcome with joy and amazement that he lost all control of his uppermost appendages and their associated phalanges, and began using them to make a series of percussive sounds.
After a few seconds of confusion and dismay, the audience members immediately surrounding Mr. Duesburg began to mimic his flailing motion, eventually building a raucous wall of sound, cast in the general direction of the musicians on stage. A few more in attendance noticed the ruckus emanating from the balcony seats and joined in on the noisy act. “At first I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed wrong not to join in,” said one concert-goer. “I’m still not sure what happened,” added another.
A mere 30 seconds after Duesburg began making the odd thumping noise, nearly everyone in the audience of 2,000 had joined him. With the newfound support of his fellow crowd members, Duesburg felt a primal desire to escalate the volume of his flesh-flapping display. As Duesburg told Cardinal reporters after the concert, “you get a lot more volume behind it when you’re standing. It’s amazing how much power you can generate with just a slight bend in the knees.” Again, the other members of the audience took after Mr. Duesburg’s lead by standing up and getting their backs involved in the motion. The noise level in the concert hall increased from 60 decibels to a deafening 110.
The musicians were alarmed by the crowd’s vigorous display of affection, and in an act of synchronicity rivaling that of their music, every instrumentalist on stage turned toward the boisterous crowd and folded over at the waist, directing the crests of their domes toward the audience. After a brief pause at the bottom of bend, the musicians returned to a standing position, repeated the gesture twice, then left the stage.
The members of the audience continued to loudly high-five themselves for a few moments before quieting down and filing out of the venue amidst quiet conversations attempting to decipher the phenomenon. UW anthropologists will be asking themselves those same questions for the foreseeable future.
