HOT SPRINGS — As one of the hit singles from the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is always a crowd-pleaser. But it’s especially popular this time of year, when groups big and small gather to do the dance of the undead featured in the 1983 music video.
“For Halloween, it’s never going to get old, I don’t think,” said Suzie Baxter, owner and artistic director of DanceArts Studio in Hot Springs.
On Wednesday, she and fellow dance instructor Jessica Allen taught the choreography from the video during a free “Thriller” dance class offered by the Garland County Library.
“This has kind of become a thing around the world,” said library clerk Adam Webb, who organized the event. “There is a Guinness World Record for the most people doing the “Thriller” dance at one time; and there are viral Internet videos of big groups doing the “Thriller” dance, so we figured we’d try it out.”
Baxter has worked with the library before, teaching ballet and hip-hop classes during the summer, but this was the first time for her to collaborate with the library for a “Thriller” dance class.
“I thought it was a great idea,” she said. “I thought it would be a whole lot of fun.”
She and Allen taught two one-hour classes for children ages 11 and up. Members of the studio’s competition team, who had been learning the choreography all week, were also on hand to help out.
“One of the good things about it is, the steps are pretty easy, and they are pretty evenly spread out,” Baxter said. “It’s real easy to memorize and learn.”
The class, made up of mostly young girls decked out in spooky garb, learned the zombie shuffle — the Frankenstein-like walk, along with moonwalking and the other cool, hip moves made famous by Michael Jackson in the popular video of dancers transformed into zombies to the singing of Jackson and the voice of scary movie master Vincent Price.
The library started offering free dance classes as a way to get their patrons “up and about” because the library serves a large number of older people in the community, Webb said.
The classes had been going well, and someone suggested they host a “Thriller” dance class.
“We definitely wanted to do it before Halloween came,” Webb said. “We do a ton of Halloween programs, and we were just wanting to do something a little extra. We had just gotten done with the [other] dance classes, so it seemed like the best time to do it.”
Mira Abdla, a foreign-exchange student from Mozambique, attended Wednesday’s class, and though she has been dancing all her life and said she loves Michael Jackson, it was her first time to learn the choreography from “Thriller.”
“We have a lot of ceremonies and we dance all the time, for birthdays and when people get married, but I’ve never done ‘Thriller,’” she said. “This will be my first time. It’s a different experience.”
Carolyn Thompson brought her son Cameron Laine, 11, to the class on Wednesday and said she hopes the program continues.
“I think it’s something positive for the library, something that they should look into doing further,” she said.
“Thriller” holds the Guinness World Record for the most successful music video; and in 2009, it became the first music video inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.