How I thrilled the world (or at least Ontario wine country)

I decided to learn and perform the "Thriller" dance based on several premises:

• I have a long history as a Michael Jackson fan, including attendance at the Victory tour in Toronto (with my dad, as a gift for my tenth birthday)
• I was once responsible for choreographing the first few bars of "Thriller" (for my elementary school folk dance team in 1984, but still)
• I used to be a dancer (it may have been years - even decades ago - but dance is like riding a bicycle, right?)

Perhaps most important, my husband volunteered to learn and perform the dance with me. So I set out to learn the dance from the youtube instructional videos, and by the night before the performance I had all the sections down. I wouldn't say I could perform them with more than minimal grace or skill, but really? I'm supposed to be newly undead so I was quite sure it wouldn't matter.

By Saturday morning, my husband announced that he couldn't possibly learn the dance in time. Reluctant to drop out of the performance, I instead recruited my sister (Will calls her "Aunt Pisho") to join me. She began learning the dance 90 minutes before we were due to check in at the park.

Clearly, we are both quite concerned.

But we work on the choreography.

The wind-tunnel sequence. Notice I am working so hard that I have had to remove my sweater. That's dedication.

Will knows the moves better than we do.

Zombies for the win!

Rehearsing with the other participants. I will spare you the video of the actual song. We look much more composed in the pictures.

Even without a costume, Will performed along with the rest of us, only getting nearly trampled twice (and more accurate than we were in much of the choreography). ROAR!