Remembering Last Year and Some Personal Thriller History

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. Even though we had started planning our largest Thriller dance for Dragon Con in May last year, it was upon his death that Kimber and I decided we HAD to do it and we had to get it going immediately. Kimber and I were joined by Lauren and we started planning to break the world record in September for the largest Thriller dance in one place. At the time it stood at 232 dancers. We started a website, directed people to the videos on YouTube and started planning and learning the dance ourselves.

After MJ's death, the idea caught on around the world. Specifically England, Spain, and Mexico. On what would have been Michael's 50th birthday groups in these countries attempted to break the William and Mary record of 232. England had close to 500, Spain around 800 and Mexico City............brace yourself.............close to 13000. After viewing their attempts we saw that Spain did not dance the required 5 minutes for the record. England DID and we were excited that we could break this. Mexico City, while HUGE and commendable, did NOT dance the choreography according to the guidelines for the record, instead they did the 2 minute dance section from the music video. Big mistake! or so we thought. It was impressive though. Here's the video because it's something else to see that many people dancing. I can't imagine the nightmare of herding all those cats.

Pretty cool no? Given the fact that they did not follow guidelines we were sure if we got more than 500 people that it would take to beat England, we would have it and at that time we had close to that many signed up on our website.

Once we got to Dragon Con, the response was unbelievable. We had over a thousand to sign up on site. Ok, so I don't think we really realized how HUGE this thing was. I was supposed to be the one to teach the dance and of course when 500 people say they are going to learn the dance, they don't. We had less than 100 probably that knew it well enough to just rehearse and go with it the other 900 piled into the Sheraton hotel and chaos began. We took about 30 (I don't remember the exact number) that had agreed to be a dance leader and made them teachers. We spilled out of our designated space and covered the entire bottom floor of the hotel. Everywhere people were learning Thriller. We had 3 hours to teach a 6 minute choreography to 900+ people. Some showed up for the second rehearsal and those....they learned it in an hour and a half. Kimber cried tears of joy when she got down to the hotel and saw what was going on and saw how many people were dancing. Here's a teaching session/rehearsal. Notice the alien in the middle.

In the end, we had 903 people dancing Thriller. Sweaty. Exhausted. And loving it.

In the end, Guinness ended up changing their guidelines after the fact so that they could give it to Mexico. While infuriating, there are bigger problems in the world. There are also other world record granting institutions. We currently hold the record with Record Holders Republic for largest Thriller dance in one location. And that's for the whole 6 minutes.

And this is how I came to know the choreography to Thriller. Friendships were forged that day and I've never seen a better example of teamwork and perseverance. Not for something just for giggles anyway. I'd like us, as belly dancers, to come together no matter where we take classes, or what our styles are, include our family, our friends and make new friends and create something we'll remember.