Thriller "Flash Mob"

Thriller from Juliana on Vimeo.

Now, I'm not the type who likes to go out looking like a zombie, but when I heard through the grapevine that Denver would be attacked by a flash mob performing Thriller on Halloween night, I was nothing but game.

For four Sundays, my friend Virginia and I joined dozens of Denverites in a small downtown dance space. We were just one of many fleets of zombie wannabes, thirsty to master MJ's moves.

It takes commitment to become a zombie. Many have tried. Many have failed. We were out for blood.

We stood stiffly in the front row, mastering zombie crawls and shoulder twitches week after week. We learned pelvic thrusts, and head tilts, fancy footwork, and striking poses. By the end, we danced like the dead and were well prepared to stun Denver dwellers on Halloween night.

Maybe you've heard of a "flash mob" before. Like when The Black Eyed Peas performed "I've got a feeling" on Michigan Avenue to kick-off Oprah's 24th season. I got chills watching one enthusiastic fan electrify a crowd of 20,000 to all dance in sync...now that's freaking cool.



Jayne and I discovered a flash-mob while walking through Liverpool Station in London. Dozens and dozens of people were dancing to the beat of their own drum; to the music on their own iPods!

My friend John pointed me to some scholarly research on the topic, an article by Bill Waisk out of Harpers Magazine, which defines a flash mob as "a public gathering of complete strangers, organized via the Internet or mobile phone, who perform a pointless act and then disperse again."

It has been something as simple as pre-arranging a bunch of strangers to look up to the sky at a precise moment.

I had imagined our flash mob would go like this: a bunch of random zombies would come from all sides of the city and unite at the D & F tower at dusk. When the clock strikes 5:30, music would blare from the loudspeakers across Skyline Park, signaling hundreds of zombies to dance in unison to surprise an unsuspecting crowd. Doesn't that sound cool!




Now, while our attempt at a flash mob was a little less "flash-mob-y" as expected (the roped off dance area, the awaiting crowd, and the media attention made it feel more like an outdoor dance performance than a true "flash mob"), it was still pretty cool. When else can you do something as random as dance in unison with two hundred other strangers to Michael Jackson's Thriller, and then scatter into the abyss? If you weren't there, you will never know!

Learning the Thriller dance is a life skill. Much like the Electric Slide, or the Macarena, one day, everyone will know all the moves to Michael Jackson's Thriller. So get to it!

http://www.thrillerdancenight.com/Thriller/Workshop_Videos_YouTube.html

or checkout CBS4.com:
http://cbs4denver.com/video/?id=63946@kcnc.dayport.com