The music ends.

They hold their pose. 

Their audience claps and puts their phones down. 

As the group of dancers gather their things and get ready to go to their next performance spot, the last thing they expect is for their previous performance to go viral politically. 

Saturday, Oct. 25, a group of Aledo Players traveled to different places in Fort Worth to perform flash mobs. After learning they would not be able to perform in the auditorium or hold their annual haunted house this year, the theatre students decided they needed to find some way to perform. Since Halloween was just around the corner, they settled on “Thriller” flash mobs around the city. 

“We wanted to do something fun and safe since we couldn’t perform in our auditorium,” junior Emily Huber said. “We performed at several other places around Fort Worth, including Inspiration Alley, Trinity Park and Clearfork.”

One of their first stops was Sundance Square in Fort Worth. When they arrived, they noticed that a party of Trump supporters was already occupying the square. But, the show must go on. 

“When we saw the Trump supporters, we asked Mrs. Skinner if we were still going to perform,” junior Katelyn Attaway said. “She told us that she had talked to them and they said they would be perfectly OK with us performing.”

As expected in a flash mob, people immediately pulled out their phones and began recording. One particular video ended up going viral, with over five million views, and had a caption of “Gen Z and Trump supporters have a dance off.” 

“When the video cut off, we were still finishing the rest of the dance,” Huber said. “What you don’t see in the video is a crowd of people behind us. What people on the internet assume is that the only people watching were the Trump supporters, when really there were multiple people around watching. But the video didn’t capture that.”

The video quickly turned political and comments no longer focused on the dance and flash mob itself but on the Trump supporters and the “fight” the caption suggested. 

“It’s crazy how quickly something can turn political although there was nothing political about it,” senior Riley Wolf said. “At least on our side, there were no political intentions.”