PERFORMANCE PRESSURE

Our correspondent creates music by shuffling feet, eating an apple and blowing a glove on a performer8217;s face in an anti-art form called Fluxus

I was 16, playing Romeo in a school play. Just when I had to utter the play8217;s most important line, 8220;I love thee8221;, I went blank. Juliet looked at me startled; her eyes popping out and her jaws dropping to the floor. The crowd8212;my school buddies and non-buddies8212;sniggered and my director almost killed me with his burning glare, signaling a premature, rude end to my hopes of being a star performer. Or so I thought till now, a long seven years later, when I volunteered to be part of a troupe of 12 performers yes, you read it right, 8220;performers8221; for American Fluxus a Sixties art genre that combines video, poetry, audio, props and performances; it is meant to be antithetical to conventional art such as paintings, music, sculptures etc. artist Ben Patterson, a tall septuagenarian with a stark-white, curly crop and deadpan humour who told us to 8220;have fun out there8221; before we hit the stage. nbsp;

There are some 40 Fluxus artists the from all around the world. Each has done several works. Fortunately, we had to perform one piece of work of 20 artists, after just one rehearsal a day before. The pieces had to create music without using conventional instruments.nbsp;

Our first piece was called 8216;Shuffle8217;. Yes, we had to shuffle our feet and simultaneously move in a straight vertical line, each performer resting his hands on the shoulders of the person before him. The line resembled an escalator, the tallest performer in the front and the shortest in the end. Standing six feet tall, I was positioned in the second place and thus, prominently exposed to the audience, whose composition 8212; mostly Delhi8217;s swish art frat, made me more conscious than what I already was. Yes, I was still reeling under the hangover of the Romeo folly at school.nbsp;

Thankfully, the audience at the National Gallery of Modern Art, laughed loud at the musical act the feet-shuffling created the music. I didn8217;t bother to gauge whether the laugh was out of ridicule or genuine amusement. I was just glad that they didn8217;t hurl tomatoes at us.
We took our bow and got off the stage. Patterson introduced the next piece, for which we formed pairs. We had to bite into apples in front of the microphone at Patterson8217;s cue. As I made a crunchy sound over the microphone, I realised that I had bitten more than I could chew. But as the proverbial show must go on, I continued to bite the fruit that was stifled in my mouth and struggling to remain inside it. I made deliberate crunching sounds that sounded like music to the audience8217;s ears. They looked convinced and I took the bow.nbsp;

The next piece was artist Mieko Shiomi8217;s 8216;Disappearing music for Face8217; in which we had to open our mouths as wide as we could and gradually shut them at Patterson8217;s signal. And so I opened my mouth, stretching my jaw muscle as I had never done before and wondering how plain stupid I must be looking while doing it. As if that wasn8217;t enough, I was worried that the mosquito meandering over my head may just comfortably sneak inside my gaping mouth. I guess Patterson must have noticed the sweat on our foreheads during this act and thus cued us to shut our mouths before the meandering mosquito could avail of its 8220;open ticket8221;. nbsp;

The last piece had Alex a fellow performer and I holding a trumpet with a glove tied to each of its ends. We had to blow the trumpet, inflate the glove and keep blowing until the glove burst. The crowd wasn8217;t aware that the glove would have to burst. We faced each other and blew into the trumpets. Alex8217;s glove blew loose but I continued. All of a sudden, mine blew into Alex8217;s face. The audience was in splits and so were both of us. We even managed to get a standing ovation. Far from the howls I got when I forgot to say, 8220;I love thee8221; as Romeo.nbsp;I did feel like shouting it out loud now, to the audience that clapped for the performance.