Flash mob: Students dance into history at Keene Pumpkin Fest
Hannah Brencher
Issue date: 10/28/09 Section: Lead Stories
Flash mob.
A large crowd of people who spontaneously assemble in a public place and perform a synchronized movement. The movement grows in size, remains for a brief period of time, and then the crowd disperses. Onlookers and passer-bys are left to wonder what has just taken place in front of their eyes.
On Saturday, October 17, twenty Assumption students from all class years participated in a flash mob at the Keene Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire. Students boarded a bus sponsored by Student Activities to the Festival and at 11 a.m. they were amongst the 150 participants to perform in a seven-minute dance that has now spread itself across YouTube and other social media outlets.
To the untrained eye, a flash mob looks as though the participants have picked up the choreography on the spot, but little is known of the long practices that make for the successful execution of this dance experiment.
The flash mobbers of Assumption College practiced on Tuesdays and Thursdays for four weeks in the aerobics room of the Plourde Recreational Center. They were careful not to digress into details over the event, since the purpose of a flash mob is to be a surprise to the public. Dance practices were headed by sophomore Leanna Hartnack and juniors Laura Brannon and Dexter Viator.
Viator and Brannon came across the concept of a flash mob on YouTube. One of the more recent flash mobs took place at the premiere of Oprah's 24th season, where a crowd of 21,000 people came together to perform a surprise dance for Oprah to the Black-Eyed Peas singing "I Got a Feeling."
Viator and Brannon, inspired by the dance, used the internet to find a flash mob that would take place in New England. Never imagining that a flash mob was in the making, the juniors came into contact with Kellie Jones, coordinator of the Keene Pumpkin Festival flash mob.
"We found a Sound of Music flash mob online that took place in a train station in Belgium and my daughter and I immediately started wondering where can we do this? When can we do this? And the Pumpkin Fest came to me," said Jones.
A large crowd of people who spontaneously assemble in a public place and perform a synchronized movement. The movement grows in size, remains for a brief period of time, and then the crowd disperses. Onlookers and passer-bys are left to wonder what has just taken place in front of their eyes.
On Saturday, October 17, twenty Assumption students from all class years participated in a flash mob at the Keene Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire. Students boarded a bus sponsored by Student Activities to the Festival and at 11 a.m. they were amongst the 150 participants to perform in a seven-minute dance that has now spread itself across YouTube and other social media outlets.
To the untrained eye, a flash mob looks as though the participants have picked up the choreography on the spot, but little is known of the long practices that make for the successful execution of this dance experiment.
The flash mobbers of Assumption College practiced on Tuesdays and Thursdays for four weeks in the aerobics room of the Plourde Recreational Center. They were careful not to digress into details over the event, since the purpose of a flash mob is to be a surprise to the public. Dance practices were headed by sophomore Leanna Hartnack and juniors Laura Brannon and Dexter Viator.
Viator and Brannon came across the concept of a flash mob on YouTube. One of the more recent flash mobs took place at the premiere of Oprah's 24th season, where a crowd of 21,000 people came together to perform a surprise dance for Oprah to the Black-Eyed Peas singing "I Got a Feeling."
Viator and Brannon, inspired by the dance, used the internet to find a flash mob that would take place in New England. Never imagining that a flash mob was in the making, the juniors came into contact with Kellie Jones, coordinator of the Keene Pumpkin Festival flash mob.
"We found a Sound of Music flash mob online that took place in a train station in Belgium and my daughter and I immediately started wondering where can we do this? When can we do this? And the Pumpkin Fest came to me," said Jones.
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