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closeSaturday, Oct. 24, 2009
A Thriller of an experience at Hangman’s
By JOY TIPPING
Special to dfw.com
SPECIAL TO THE S-T/RICHARD W. RODRIGUEZ
Over 300 "zombies" rehearse Thriller at Hangman’s House of Horrors. SPECIAL TO THE S-T/RICHARD W. RODRIGUEZ
By 6:45 Saturday night, I finally had my roar turns down pat. But that air-guitar-ticktock move was still not quite there. Thankfully, there were about 300 zombies surrounding me, all quite helpful despite the rotting flesh, oozing wounds and various implements of death — a scalpel here, an ax there — protruding from necks and heads.
It was all part of my weeklong experience as a Thriller dancer with Hangman’s House of Horrors in Fort Worth. We tried Saturday to help set a Guinness World Record for simultaneous dancing to the Michael Jackson song, with an expected 270,000 dancers from Australia to Pakistan to Venezuela.
My adventure started Oct. 17, when I showed up at Hangman’s for a three-hour session to learn the steps. None of the steps are particularly difficult, and after a couple of hours, we were all feeling pretty smug. That’s when we found out we’d been dancing at half the normal speed. Oops.
So while the dance isn’t hard, doing it — for more than six minutes — at correct speed is a bit daunting. I also got a makeup lesson from Bobbie Weiner, aka Bloody Mary, who made up the dead bodies for the movie Titanic.
I rehearsed all week: in the restroom at work, at home as my husband tried not to snicker at me, in a CVS when I heard Thriller on the overhead radio system. It all came together Saturday night in a delirium of zombiedom. The eerie throng included zombie pirates, nurses, prom queens and a squad of 54 walking-dead drill team members.
Brandon Elliott, 17, of White Settlement said he learned the dance only recently but already knows it well enough that he’s teaching it to drama club members, cheerleaders and faculty members at Brewer High School. Judy Stone-Nunnely, an art teacher at Brewer, said the experience was unexpectedly moving. "It’s like a worldwide peace movement, everyone just happy and dancing."
For the organizers at Hangman’s, Saturday’s event represented the culmination of a year’s work. "We had 16 dancers when we started last year," said Darla Robinson, Thriller coordinator and zombie bride at Hangman’s. "And this year, it’s more than 300. Honestly, I had chills watching that last rehearsal. My knees were knocking. Just a sea of zombies. Fabulous."
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