The Choreography of Riots

About an hour had passed when the first fires began burning. They were sparked with petrol and tossed cigarette lighters, teased into life with banners and flags. The crowd had swollen to a few thousand, clogging all the main arteries into the precinct, the hardcore three hundred or so at the front were rooted at a stand-off with armour-plated police guarding the foyer entrance to the government building. Neither side looked likely to relinquish their stance, instead intent on grinding against one another like tectonic plates, just waiting for the friction to provoke an inevitable eruption of violence.

I watched with a sense of bemused excitement as the riot progressed on the live web-stream; relishing in the unfolding civil unrest piped through onto my computer screen in high-definition. Alongside the footage, a noticeboard of messages and commands were continuously refreshing from the online audience, participating safe from the madding crowds behind inconspicuous profiles and monikers.

-Keep adding to that bigger fire –
-Carry on pushing, more of you add to the numbers, you’ll break through soon! –

In response to this instructional drip-feed, those on the street began piling up the bonfire around which others danced to the dubstep soundtrack like contemporary pagans, building the spontaneous pyre until smoke was billowing up into the placid sky. The whistles and cheers from the crowd-swell acted as a hostile clarion call, the chants building and peaking like a football faithful on match-day.

From the aerial vantage point of the camera I could pick out one of the rioters being knocked to the ground by a pummelling police baton, an act of desperate aggression as control began to slowly ebb from their collective grasp.


-Not all of you saw that but we can see the police singling people out on the front line and knocking them to the ground. Stand firm guys!! –

The collective instinct of the crowd was responsive to the warm words of encouragement filtering through via their phones and rallied together, locking arms and shoulders, pushing ahead in an effort at crushing their way into an advance like a giant rugby scrum.

Flares trailing a crimson plume were launched into the swarm which dispersed around their descent like ripples, breaking formation with the synchronicity of a tuna fleet. Phones were clenched in the hands of the rioters, checking for directions and instruction from us the online commentators, whilst also brandishing improvisational weaponry; the armoury and tools of disparate ages brought together in a rebellious synergy.

-Throw the flares towards the police, not at each other –
-You’re gonna have to hurry people, the police reinforcements’ll be here any minute –

In desperation the crowd surged forwards like a tsunami and finally managed to break through the outer skin of the police lines and into the belly of the building.

-You’re in guys, you’re in!! –
-Nice one! –

A tumultuous roar went up from the mob and I felt a slight bloom of anticipation as I sat forward in my chair. Knowing that the mass was too great for them to hold any longer, the police reluctantly surrendered all resistance and edged back to the sidelines, now mere observers to the divine riot taking shape before them, scowling like disapproving parents.

-Can we get a shot from inside the foyer please? Cheers –

Inside the foyer of the building, an ornate and plush governmental atrium. The intruders leapt and spiralled with gymnasts’ agility across the floor mat. Glass curtain walls were savaged by brutal feet, cracking, splintering and then smashing to the ground. Slogans and declarations of rebellion were hastily daubed upon walls; the rioters staking their hostile claim on the decorative rites of the building.

-Has anyone got a panning shot over the heads of the external crowd, looking into the building maybe? –

Outside it was clear that a previously wary portion of the crowd were becoming increasingly tempted by the accomplishments of the more daring, enthralled by the spectacle they realised they too were a part of. Everyone was just as eager to claim the starring role as everyone else in this lavish yet gritty production, no one seemed prepared to stand aside as a bit-part actor.

-Can we get a view of the glass frontage coming down? –

The police were stood useless and scared as more bodies piled through the wreckage into the building, as though it were the entrance to a wild illegal rave whose safe capacity was rapidly being exceeded.

-You guys on the left, you’re obscuring the view, push forward into that police line if you can –

On the command of the director – a faceless profile from a bedroom or office somewhere who happened to have taken control of the riot’s choreography – the group charged ahead at the police who, initially stunned, managed to wrench up their shields to batter them back. I couldn’t help but smile as I saw a hapless photojournalist become detached from the media fray and inadvertently become a sitting target for a frenzied police officer who landed a crunching truncheon blow onto his extended and vulnerable zoom lens.

Even from the footage the smell of joyous carnage was tangible; the panic of the police; the sorrow of the once-proud building as it was invaded by a splurge of destructive hosts. Meanwhile the camera exhibited the mob ascending the stairwell, cheering and hollering as they wound their way around the skeleton of the high-rise like a spreading virus unleashed upon the exposed nervous system.

-Don’t stop till you reach the top guys –
-Get out on the roof if you can! -

Like a well-rehearsed ballet the revellers danced forwards and into the building, merely being swept along on the tide as if by some kind of telepathy unique only to herds. They sneered at the police with contempt as they passed, wallowing in this upending of authority which was at once so alien and irresistible.

Meanwhile, more of the online audience were beginning to contribute, as though this were a television serial with which they had only now begun to engage. They offered lighting tips and formation strategies like cinematographers working from home, and one eagle-eyed viewer helpfully pointed out that a young girl’s face had been exposed. After receiving this costume advice through her phone she hastily scrambled to conceal herself, keen to avoid being featured in the authority’s private production, for which filming was also discreetly under-way.

-Are you nearly up on the roof? This is gonna look awesome! –

At the besieged entrance to the foyer, the police had somehow managed to force their way across to plug the void, stemming the torrent of invaders who howled in disappointment. You could sense the animosity between those on the inside and those kept out, and I wondered whether the police would be suddenly beset with conspiratorial asides and bribes from those desperate to pass through onto the other side.

The media crews moved their way alongside the police barricade, cameras capturing every fragment of glass and jeer from the crowd, attempting to capture the most visually arresting representation of the day’s events, to crystallise the carnage for the front pages and lend weight to their post-match analysis.

-Okay, we’ve got people up on the roof, let’s get a tight shot on them, good work guys –

A helicopter tracking-shot captured the scene on the roof as rioters began to appear from within like refugees fleeing a flood. They waved up at the camera with the joy of climbers having reached a summit up to which they had struggled bravely. The mass of bodies below them cheered in adulation; everyone delighted that a select few had made it into the starring roles that they themselves had been denied.

-You lot on the roof, start draping the banners and signs over the edge –

At the behest of the improvised production crew, flags were unfurled and lashed down to the concrete lip of the building. The gaudy statements of fury and derision screamed out in bold lettering as the roof dwellers danced to boom-box beats, their mission accomplished, the building apprehended.

-That looks amazing guys, nice one! There’s not much more you can do now, the job’s done –
-Get that fire extinguisher that’s over there –

My stomach began to tighten as I saw a couple of hooded men detach from their vantage point over the precinct below and search for the conveniently-placed fire extinguisher, a prop left in place earlier by a well-prepared stagehand.

-Yeah good idea, spray the pigs below! –

The gladiatorial roar of the assembled crowd seemed to be almost feral. The police at the entrance had now manoeuvred a radius of empty space around them away from the front line of the rioters. The space between them was now a no-man’s land into which no one with sense would offer themselves. Each side was instead happy to hold their respective positions along the battleground; a new kind of trench warfare played out on cracked tarmac.

Up on the roof, the guys with the extinguisher had carried it up to the building’s edge and were now wrestling with the hose, trying to unleash it.

-Try and get it free boys, that’s right –

I sat further forward in my seat as they finally unlatched the hose and held it up on the concrete ledge.

-Drop it! -
(put it down???)

-Are you sure?! –

-Drop it! -
(throw it???)

A split second decision, an instinct fuelled by an omnipresent bloodlust, cast the steel missile over the side. The continuous online feed seemed to stutter and slow as everyone, both at the scene and the audience with hands hovering over keyboards, gaped in wonder as this crimson flare sailed down past storeys of windows.

The skull of an unsuspecting police officer broke the fall of the dead weight as he crumpled to the pavement beside his shocked colleagues. Man down. A first casualty of the war. The stream of footage seemed to be on pause, or else stalling with an elusive signal, as the camera caught the head of the policeman split over the tarmac like a watermelon; blood and brain matter strewn like an exploded spraypaint can.

The effect on the atmosphere at the scene was something akin to a punch being thrown in an otherwise lively, convivial pub, or someone knocking their knife to a restaurant floor with a noise to cut every other conversation to silence. Nothing like a death to tarnish a riot.

The ethereal gloss and gleam of the presentation thus far had been irretrievably shattered by the inconsiderate grime of irrationality and I knew it was time for me to stop watching. Feeling slightly repulsed I shut off the live feed and sat back in my chair, exhaling through puffed cheeks. As I went to habitually check my emails, I struggled to decipher the sudden twist of spontaneous violence that I had just been a witness to; so far away and safe from, yet so close and so involved. As guilty as the rest.

The production that had played out, climaxing with a random daylight culling, had looked undeniably visceral and beautiful, a piece of professional ingenuity, but in the end had been too much and I vowed to watch out for the more palatable highlights that would be broadcast in an edited form later that evening.