On Friday, the Academy of Music will be overrun with zombies.
Only a few days ago, these living humans, who will perform outside the theater, first had to rehearse being undead.
“Who doesn’t like to shake and stomp and shimmy?” said choreographer Zazie Tobey. “The moves are really delicious to do.”
The Northampton theatre will host its first-ever “Thriller Parade” on Oct. 30, at 5 and 5:15 p.m., before a performance of “Beetlejuice JR.” (The rain date is Saturday, Oct. 31, at the same times.) The “parade” isn’t a real parade per se: It’s a flash mob in which dancers dressed as zombies perform Michael Jackson’s famous “Thriller” dance outside, right in front of the Academy of Music.
The Academy’s previous executive director, Debra J’Anthony, conceived of the idea: She’d envisioned a parade of dancers dressed as zombies moving down Main Street, but it couldn’t happen that way because of logistical issues. The Academy would have had to shut down the street and figure out a way to get the music source to follow the dancers along the way.
“It seemed like a massive thing for something we’d never done before,” said Ray Dumont, the Academy’s present executive director, who joined earlier this year.
In Dumont’s first staff meeting in his new role, he and his staff decided to shift the parade idea into a flash mob during daylight hours, which would not only be safer and more manageable but also would “really pop the Academy,” he said, with a very familiar song.
“It’s good for the Academy to be part of its community. Entertainment’s only part of what we do. We have to be part of the community. We have to — we have to give people access to us, and this is such a cool way to do it,” he said.
Seventy adults and eight children have signed up to take part in the inaugural “parade.” About half of them, including a number of families, turned up to the Academy for a 10 a.m. rehearsal on Sunday, Oct. 25, though they weren’t yet in zombie face paint or costumes.
Ten-year-old Anatole Bernecker, who has been part of a number of youth productions at the Academy, was still getting used to doing the dance at full speed, though he had an advantage: He’s also learning the “Thriller” moves in his jazz dance class. He has invited other kids over to his house to teach them the dance himself. In fact, Tobey called Bernecker her “unofficial assistant.”
“This is a teacher, a sharer, and a maker,” Tobey said.
As the group ran through the routine, shaking their hips, lifting up their “claws,” and dragging their feet like zombies, Tobey encouraged them and gave them advice on how to adjust the dance if needed. If, for instance, it was too difficult for a dancer to lift up their heels to do Jackson’s famous “toe stand,” they could bend their knees instead. If they couldn’t bend their knees or had other concerns about the appearance of their moves, no problem: “We’re zombies,” Tobey said. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“It’s the original choreography, but it’s modified to fit a regular person’s body — somebody that’s not Michael Jackson, who can’t float and balance on the toes. And if you watch the original music video, they are all professionally trained dancers, and we’re not. We are enthusiastic community members who want to come together and move, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do the hard choreography, too, and modify it to feel good,” she said.
As the rehearsal neared its end, the group took their dance outside to practice it in front of the Academy. A G73E bus idled in front of them, and curious onlookers watched from the sidewalks.
Dumont has a friend in his home state, Maine, who’s been running a “Thriller” flash mob for more than a decade that draws hundreds of participants. The Academy’s flash mob has yet to grow to that size, but this is only its first year. Next year, it could be even bigger and both Tobey and Dumont are already looking forward to bringing it back.
Viewing the “Thriller Parade” is free and open to the public.
