Senior Flash Mob

A flash mob is a group of people mobilized by social media to meet in a public place for the purpose of doing an unusual or entertaining activity of short duration. In a Dulles Virginia mall, there was a dancing senior flash mob.They came from a retirement home called Ashby Ponds. The person to come up with the idea to do a flash mob was Jessica McKay, the public affairs manager at Ashby ponds. The oldest out of the group of twenty-five was eighty years old. The youngest was sixty-six years old. The song that they danced to was “Tonight is the Night” by Outasight.There were practicing for two months, once a week.

The people of the retirement home began planning for this flash mob sometime last year, and they had discussions and meetings about it. Later on they decided that they would give it a try. By late January the community got a dance studio called Arthur Murray Dance Studio to help them with this plan. The studio help with choreography and worked with the senior group regularly. Dan Dunne, director of communications with Erickson Living, which operates Ashby Ponds, says the participants were committed from the beginning.

The dance lasted for almost three minutes. Everyone seemed to love their surprise dance.There were many mall shoppers that were surprised by the flash mob. While some of the people at the mall were just friends, family, and neighbors that already knew about the flash mob. After the dance was over a group of four women gathered up and talked about how they felt about the flash mob dance."You get all piped up for something like this," one of the women says.

Jessica McKay says that she does plan on trying the flash mob again at another location. She says, "We're going to give them some time to recuperate, and maybe we'll do another flash mob and surprise people somewhere else."

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