zombie dance

English

Etymology

Popularized by Michael Jackson in the music video Thriller (1983), specifically the first sense.

Noun

zombie dance (plural zombie dances)

1. (dance) A type of dance in which participants use dance moves that mimic the undead, often combined with a masquerade and costumes.
   • 2008, Shawn McIntosh, ‎ Marc Leverette, Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, page 15:

     The Minneapolis police did not share the fun spirit at a "zombie dance party” held in ]uly 2006 in Minneapolis, arresting six people dressed as zombies for carrying devices that looked like WMDs—which turned out to be backpacks with homemade stereos in them so the zombies could dance.

   • 2013, Amber L. Davisson, Lady Gaga and the Remaking of Celebrity Culture, page 12:

     Through the zombie dance sequence, Gaga shows us that poignancy, pathos and pain ultimately lead to the discovery of the beauty found within our agonizing life experiences.”

   • 2016, Pete Kalu, Zombie Xl: The Boy Who Got Sick of Warming the Bench:

     Before he can answer, everyone starts busting zombie moves—because who doesn't love a zombie dance?

   • 2017, Sarah Juliet Lauro, Zombie Theory: A Reader:

     In 2007, more than three hundred inmates, many of whom were imprisoned for murder, performed a truncated version of Jackson's zombie dance from "Thriller."

2. (dance) A ritual Caribbean dance in which participants enter a trance state and symbolically die and are born again.
   • 2006, Journal of Haitian Studies - Volumes 12-13, page 20:

     The repetition of moves from the zombie dance in the quotidian market scene and in the ag'ya illustrates the influence or integration of elements of vodou culture in the everyday.

   • 2010, John Blacking, ‎ Joann W. Kealiinohomoko, The Performing Arts: Music and Dance, page 300:

     Figure 4: Zombie dances at Cumina ceremonies 3: the possessed hurling himself through the dancing crowd blindly

   • 2011, Stephanie Leigh Batiste, Darkening Mirrors:

     The beginning of the zombie dance is driven by the hypnotic rhythms of multiple drums.

   • 2023, Lucy Swanson, The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction, page 169:

     For example, the 2017 documentary short Kale Zonbi or whipping Zombie represents images of what are described in promotional materials as "a ritual dance, slaves and masters: it's the zombie dance.

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see zombie,‎ dance.; a dance performed by zombies.
   • 2009, E. Van Lowe, Never Slow Dance With a Zombie, page 207:

     " Welcome to the zombie dance! " Taft bellowed. Zombies began filing in, hundreds of them, filling up the gym, heading in our direction.

   • 2012, Stephen Jones, Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback:

     He did a little zombie dance, and sang a little zombie song, and made some jokes about handbags.

   • 2013, Sean Abley, Out in the Dark, page 231:

     Other scenes that got cut included several versions of the zombie dance but the tide cost us at least one of them.

   • 2020, Albert Aykler, Welcome to the Zombie Mill:

     I pulled free of the large zombie dance party and aimed the car at the front doors of the convenience store. A small pod of zombies stood in the open parking spots near the large ice bag cooler out front.

4. (figurative) A sequence of events that lead to someone feeling dead inside, and the actions of the individual as they experience that sequence.
   • 1973, Anne Zoltan, Annie: the Female Experience, page 72:

     Goddesses are for feasts –though it turns out that there is one constant dish-of-the-day: tasty little tit-mice. Thus the zombie dance, English style.

   • 2003, Edwidge Danticat, The Butterfly's Way:

     Our zombie dance began with a first outing, our first lace dress for church, our first communion, our first dance.

   • 2011, David McNally, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism:

     Put differently, there is a danger that the proletariat might not be monstrous enough, that its internal separations, the ultimate key to capital's power over it, might leave it too unco-ordinated to perform its zombie-dance.

   • 2020, Rakesh V. Vohra, Prices and Quantities, page 145:

     Then the makers and things made turned alike into commodities, and the motion of society turned into a kind of zombie dance, a grim cavorting whirl in which objects and people blurred together till the objects were half alive and the people were half dead.