Antidote to the Monday Morning Blues – Beautiful Monday Instead of Beauty Monday

I walk to work now, but I took the subway when I lived in New York, and I really wish my morning commute had had more of this:

This lovely event happened at 8am two weeks ago, on Monday March 23, in Antwerp, Belgium, at the main train station. I love the chain of events and I especially love watching people’s faces – you can see people’s skepticism, shock, disbelief, and ultimately joy. And I am so thankful Kelly over at Starting Anew posted it on her blog on Saturday.

I don’t like crowds and yet I am wishing I had seen this in person. And I know the concept of flash-crowds is not new, and that this choreographed flash-crowd is more of a media event than a flash crowd. Apparently they are increasingly being used in the UK and Germany to promote TV shows and other advertising, but this one was just lovely to watch. I especially like how people just joined in and danced – some from the sidelines, and some really took part. There’s an amazing exuberance and energy to the scene in the montage above, but it’s even more apparently from this person’s digital camera recording below:

According to this blog and a little research, it seems that this stunt took a month of preparation and was part of an advertising campaign for a TV station’a reality show In Search of Maria . which apparently is the Belgian version of BBC show from a few years ago. Here is an ad for it.

Watching this was really quite amazing – and also so refreshing – I don’t associate commuting in New York with much except reading and crowds, though I do remember certain days when the terrorism alert levels were especially high and there was police everywhere and everyone was anxious and on-edge. And later on, during 2008 when the markets were just tumbling, people commuting into downtown Manhattan were anxious about their jobs and their lives. The Monday morning blues played almost every day at that point. Something like that would have been quite wonderful.

I hope you enjoy these videos for a Beautiful Monday and forgive me for missing Beauty Monday this week. The videos seemed better than the Beauty Monday post I was going to write, which was about Stila’s demise – though apparently it’s a reassessment rather than a bankruptcy.

One last video – a montage on how the stunt in Antwerp was pulled off – it shows everyone a bit tense at breakfast before the performance (I wonder what these pastries are):