Can the Palms Be Taken Back

A dancer completes a turn, her heel landing steady. The movement has already ended, but that sheet of applause has not been released. In another venue, the opposite is happening: the applause has gone on too long, palms aching, the elderly people in the front row gasping for breath, and still no one dares to be the first to sit down.

In nineteenth-century theaters, professional applauders would enter early, sit scattered through the house, and act on signal. One form of coordination was especially blatant: half the people applauded while the other half hushed, covering the singer’s breath change. The sustained note the audience heard did not break; the body onstage had already been patched once by other people’s voices.

This is more awkward than fake applause. Fakery at least remains within the question of true or false; this kind of response has already reached inside the performance, stitching up a break on someone else’s behalf. It can make a body appear more complete, and it can also make another body suddenly lose the reception that ought to arrive. The person onstage may not know which hand is arranging her; she will only know that the movement has landed, and no sound around her has caught it.

But refusing to respond is not automatically clean either. What Adam Goodes ran into before each touch of the ball was not one person’s opposition, but a layer of booing described as white noise. Each person handed over only a little sound, yet together it acquired a direction. No one person needed to stand up and say this is mine, but the person on the field had to receive it again and again.

At this point, withdrawal no longer naturally resembles honesty. Palms can patch holes for others, and they can also hide oneself; the lightest bit of sound, when it lands at the other end, is not necessarily light. It has combined once in the air, and gone over bearing a direction.

In another venue, that round of applause is still going. Palms ache, the elderly gasp for breath, but no one is willing to become the first person to stop. The applause has grown dull. He lowers his hands a little, then raises them again; the person beside him is still clapping.