Massive Michael Jackson Tribute In Amsterdam
This Sunday I ran around like a crazy reporter. Purpose of my trip was to bring you the coverage of the Michael Jackson FlashMob Tribute held in Amsterdam first. And I can tell you, Amsterdam seems to have thousands of MJ fans…
See the first MJ FlashMob at Museumplein in Amsterdam
But at ViralBlog.com we love to spread knowledge and insights as well. So read on and take a deeper dive into the making off the Amsterdam MJ Tribute FlashMob and the next FlashMob at Leidseplein.
I have been shooting, editing and uploading for hours today, so hope you enjoy it…
Making-Off: Michael Jackson FlashMob in Amsterdam
At 15:00 hours I walked to Vondelpark in Amsterdam. I was amazed by the number of people I saw there. 4 Very large groups of people were trying to perform Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
The collective energy I experienced was also amazing: many hundreds of people were really working hard to get synergy in the dance.
Making-Off Part 1: Collective energy at the MJ FlashMob practice
Making-Off Part 2: After 1 hour most are getting the Thriller moves!
Making-Off Part 3: Another group is almost ready to go Thriller
Round- One: On our way to dance #1
If you have seen the Stockholm FlashMob, please realize that the Amsterdam FlashMob might have attracted 5-10 times more people. I think a few thousand people watched the Thriller practice at the Vondelpark and followed the crew like detectives…
I took this shot at 16:30 at Museumplein, where we expected the FlashMob to take place. But we just followed another 2 Thousand people so we were not sure at all where the performance would took place..
At below video shot you can see how big the group is getting…
Followers: Large group of curious people following MJ lookalike dancers to Museumplein
So many curious people walked to Museumplein that I lost count. I guess 1.500 to 2.500 people were watching. When I looked around I heard lots of people talking: what’s going the happen, what are those people doing?
See the large audience that was standing and waiting of what would happen next. They expected something crazy was about to start since several people were dressed as the King of Pop.
Crowded house: People at Museumplein waiting on what might happen next
After dance #1 Isabelle (with megaphone) is trying to confuse the audience and press and shouts: press can follow me, but the next location will not be revealed, all dancers will get the next secret location per text message soon.
Fun part of being in Amsterdam: even a Police Officer (yellow helmet and jacket) was dancing along in the Museumplein FlashMob. He did the Thriller dance pretty well actually…
Instructions: Isabelle trying to get rid of press and media
After the first dance at Museumplein the large group split. We did not know where to go and which group to follow. So we decided to follow one group of lead dancers and walked towards Leidseplein.
Here we experienced a more spontaneous FlashMob, although it was very hard to get rid of all the camera crews from TV stations and photographers from Newspapers. The audio crew had walked into another part of the city.
The dancers walked onto Leidseplein and mingled with tourists. Suddenly one lead dancer started to shout: “Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson” and many tourists were surprised like hell.
Next the dancers started the Michael Jackson FlashMob Tribute Part 2.
FlashMob Part 2: Thriller dance at Leidseplein Amsterdam
Concluding I can share: I think the Amsterdam FlashMob was much bigger than the Stockholm one, which I also love a lot. I hope the tour will continue too many other cities around the globe.
I really enjoyed the dance practice at Vondelpark for 1,5 hours. And so did about 2.000 other people that had noticed a strange group of dancers entering the park.
Most of all the collective energy surprised me a lot. I had heard James Surowiecki talk about his book “Wisdom of Crowds” at Google Zeitgeist 2005 in Mountain View. But I had never thought collective energy could be so powerful, really amazing.
I assume more MJ FlashMobs occurred today in Amsterdam, but I had to go home to edit and upload my videos and story for you.
It was an incredible experience to see so many people showing their respect to the King of Pop. If there is a heaven and MJ is already there, he must love you guys in Stockholm and Amsterdam even more…
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I just got home and went straight onto Google search to see what was on about today. It sincerly was the best day of my life. I learnt so much about the nature and power of social networking. Of crowds. Of music. Of collective spirit. At times I got very tense, it was such a surprise to try to control a huge huge mob of fans. Without any staff and with a turnout of over 1k dancers we were completly overwhelmed.
I found it fantastic that the crowd took a life ot it’s own, we taught them the dance and they brought Thiller to the whole city.
THANK you to everyone who came and participated and made this a huge tribute to the king of pop. More of you turned out than I ever imagined.
Thank you ESPECIALLY to Ruben, Sarah, Annemieke & Arnauld who managed to give the Thriller dance to over 1k people in a just a few hours.
I’ll send official thank yous later.
Lots of love,
Isabelle O’Kane
This is the mob from a paticipant point of view:
Although the event and energy WAS indeed great the beast part was definitely the practise in Vondelpark. MJ would have been proud to see all the hundreds of people having fun and learning the steps from enthusiastic techers. Everyone felt like they were part of something great.
Unfortunately when it came time to official kick off the whole event turned into a media circus that looked like it was aimed to give credit to few while leaving hundreds disappointed. The organisers new about media attention beforehand and were excited about it – this attitude was clear throughout prctise, logistics, and performance. The last mob was actually on a bridge with ~20 “elite” dancers performing to 5 TV cameras.
I’d prefer to call this event a performance not a flash mob – while still not forgetting that this was a great tribute to MJ however it all went down.
@ Karelia,
I think you hammered it exactly! Great perspective you give us.
Also I think possible next editions will be even more crowded with press and media, so how to ahndle that will be a strategic question..
Agree with you, we should call this a very large MJ tribute.
The practice part in the Vondelpark was really great. Including the people’s collective energy.
Thanks
Igor
It’s just too bad that the bigger media jumped in, which gave it all a not so spontaneous spirit and what happened to the audio?
Parool.tv made a small compilation of two locations: http://www.parool.nl/parool/nl/544/PAROOL-TV/article/detail/254500/2009/07/20/Dansen-voor-Michael.dhtml
I couldn’t agree more! Isabelle thank you for starting this snowball-effect in Amsterdam!
I wanted to let you know that the Official Video from this event has been published now online. You can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLDUFBpj1us
Fantastic stuff!!
Long live the king
long live thrillyjean