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Community Corner

Senior Dance Mob Busts Moves at Mall

Old Orchard shoppers get an impromptu 6-minute show as 80 promote healthy living.

Healthy living can begin at any age, and a group set out to prove that Sunday afternoon.

More than 80 senior citizens and their family members performed a spontaneous “dance mob” to promote healthy aging during a surprise at Westfield Old Orchard Mall.

The six-minute choreographed performance, which occurred unbeknownst to Old Orchard shoppers, had participants waltzing, jitter-bugging, twisting and even doing a little hip-hop.

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Sponsored by CJE SeniorLife’s Center for Healthy Living and Bizar Entertainment, the men and women performers of all ages learned the routine during classes over the past month. The event aims to promote a new image of older adults--that of healthy aging, vibrancy and independence.

The dance mob also marked the introduction to the Chicago areas of  Wilde & Greene Restaurant + Natural Market, which is scheduled to open later this summer as . The business is holding a .

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“It was great fun and everyone was in such great spirits,” said Jane Braun, a Skokie resident who was among the dancers. “When you see older adults participating in an event like this, it goes to show that life doesn’t end at a certain age. Vitality and being young at heart are a mindset.”

Similar to a flash mob, such as the one that showed up at Oprah Winfrey’s Michigan Avenue taping in September 2009, a dance mob is a large group of people who learn a dance routine and then perform it together at a designated time and place usually without any advance public notification. So many onlookers are caught off guard about what is occurring--like those at Old Orchard Mall.

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