By Heidi Trautmann

A normal day in a supermarket, people rushing and doing their shopping thinking of the load of work ahead; and while you select your fruit, the person next to you in the green apron turns around and starts to sing, full voice, sings one of the famous opera arias, and all of a sudden from all directions, people come and join in, and you as simple customer, are literally mesmerized. People all around are transfixed in their motion, stop in the middle of a sentence, and listen to something which they can’t believe is true.

Another scene in a shopping mall in Bavaria: young people in traditional dresses start singing among crowds of people, from the balconies, coming down the elevators, and sing Bavarian pop, and many of the customers stop, look around and their facial expression changes from non-communicative to absolute joy.

And so I could go on, similar scenes in public places among tourists, all of a sudden, musicians come out of the shade into the middle of a place with their chairs and instruments and start making music, classical music.

Here in Cyprus I have seen classical dancers perform ‘water’ in the middle of the street in the buffer zone to attract the attention of the people to not waste water.

Poets are invited to contribute their poems for a street activity, in Berlin thousands of poems on slips of papers were poured like rain from helicopters flying over the roofs of the city, the same idea was done in Cyprus, also across the green line in Nicosia, thousands of poems were released from giant balloons onto the streets, I still have some of those slips of poems in my drawer.

I have often enough reported on these happenings, performances, surprises suddenly springing up in the middle of people. It keeps fascinating me. It was only this spring in Nicosia that people from Tango Clubs in North and South Nicosia started dancing outside the Büyük Han, down Arosta Street, across the checkpoint and down Ledra Street, and people stopped and watched, and some courageous started dancing themselves. Great scenes.

But also the visual arts are in it, but they have always done street art as long as I can think back, but to show their art in supermarkets as video films or as installations between stands with vegetables that is new.  Artists painted the white washed walls along the highway between Girne and Lefkosa, not so long ago, this spring, they spent an entire day under the scorching sun. Actors and actresses step down from the stage and make their point about something, in the middle of the street, often to protest against something.

They all come and touch the public, literally,  they want the close contact and the immediate answer. Opera and classical music brought to the people in the street who most probably cannot afford to go to the theatre in the European cities. The performing and visual arts are no longer a holy distant golden calf on a pedestal, it is stepping down and mixing, they are with us.