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A circle pit is a term for aggressive, violent dancing performed by people running in a circle usually at Rock music gigs. It is a type of strenuous dancing associated with certain subgenres of music such as ska, punk rock, thrash, heavy metal, and even some harder rock music and is usually started by members of the crowd running wildly in a circle slamming into each other in response to the speed of the music and the beat. The tempo and speed of the music playing also play a big role on how fast and intense the circle pit is; if a blast beat is being played, the mosh pit will be much more intense than a pit danced to, say, a basic rock beat.
A circle pit is a large and usually roughly circular clearing in the audience of a music concert slightly apart from the front of the stage. The circle is formed from the members clearing the space and running in a counterclockwise direction. A circle pit varies from a mosh pit in that a mosh pit usually does not have any sort of orderly behavior: participants in a mosh pit often push, shove and bounce off each other rather than moving in a circle.
A meat grinder is a variation on a circle pit. Dancers form a circle, running counterclockwise. Inside of this is another circle, in which dancers run clockwise. Inside of this is yet another circle of dancers running counterclockwise. In the middle there is small mosh pit, being kept in by the innermost circle. This generally occurs at ska punk, ska-core, hardcore punk, and punk rock concerts.
Fans of different punk, metal or rock styles often have their own rules or characteristics for pits, ranging from relatively friendly to deliberately violent. Originally associated with subcultures, pits have been seen more and more in association with mainstream acts. Typically, circle pits at mainstream concerts are considered to be relatively safe.
Origins and Characteristics
Circle pits can be traced to the Bay Area thrash metal scene in the early 1980s, as reported by numerous thrash metal artists. The first video recording of a mosh pit can be found in the movie Another State of Mind viewable here.
The early characteristic motions of circle pit participants were flailing of the arms, pushing one another, striking others with elbows, or exaggerated arm and leg movements somewhat similar to the '60s dance called "The Monkey".
Essentially, circle pits involve simply skipping, skanking, running, or power walking rapidly around the rim of the moshpit. The saying "Run fast, turn left" describes circle pit behavior: an anticlockwise rotation is observed by dancers inside the circle pit, and moving clockwise would be difficult for all but the largest and most determined.
Audience members not involved in the mosh but on the innermost part of the circle often act as "bouncers", "eye of the pit", "pit-pushers" or "pit boss", pushing moshers back into the pit if they are shoved out of the circle. Often, the innermost circle will try to catch anyone from falling over and into the crowd, or help up those that do.
Quite often somebody will yell out "open the pit" and people will move back to create the open circle.
Risks and dangers
One's likelihood to be harmed in a circle pit has a lot to do with the size of the audience and the genre of music.
Typically small audiences at rock shows will have "friendly" pits where dancers help up others that have fallen, smaller men, boys, women, and girls are able to participate equally with the larger males, and a feeling of "community" is generally pervasive. At such "friendly" shows, it's considered rude to try to incite more violent styles of dancing, and one would typically sustain no injuries at all.
One is more likely to get injured when the audiences are larger, although audience members will typically try to pull dancers that have fallen over out of the way of serious injury as quickly as possible.
At concerts featuring heavy metal, more aggressive pits are often seen, yet the community spirit of the "friendly" pits generally remains; those who fall are helped up by fellow audience members, and the injuries sustained would be from minor bumps, bruises and scratches to teeth being kicked out and broken bones.
At Download Festival 2007, DevilDriver fans attempted to create the world's largest circle pit around 6 pillars holding up the tent, covering the Dimebag Darrell stage, footage can be seen here. At Reading Festival 2007, Lostprophets lead singer Ian Watkins told the crowd to start many circle pits, during the song Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja. They also managed to make the crowd of 80,000 simultaneously jump.
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