Enhance your dance
I know The Uniter‘s Justice themed issue has come and gone. But I had planned on bringing an important issue to the blogging table and I missed the opportunity. But perhaps I’m just in time for Restorative Justice Week and you will humour me and give me the chance to talk about it now.
In 2006, violence in the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre (CPDRC) had increased to endemic proportions. Prison officials were at a loss as to how to deal with the rampant violence. With over 1,500 inmates, the situation was almost unmanageable. Until finally, a solution was found by the centre’s Capitol Security Consultant, Byron Garcia: choreographed dance routines.
But what song could he possibly choose to capture the minds (and move the bodies) of the prisoners? Garcia settled on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. And what better song to pick than Thriller. After all, hardened criminals have a unique ability to capture the horrific essence of dancing zombies (narrated by MJ and Vincent Price, of course).
Garcia first described the correctional facility, saying, “the jail is a living hell.” He found inspiration in Rod Temperton’s lyrics (as performed by MJ):
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller.
According to Garcia’s website, “whether inside or outside the jail, people in this world seal their own tomb and are closing in their own doom by foul and decadent cultures in a society. Nobody can get away from this doom in life for as long as they don’t stay away from ‘the evil of the thriller’ ... The ‘living hell’ in jails is about corruption, violence, gang culture, culture of the insane, culture of deceit and betrayal. ‘If someone wants to see hell on Earth, if someone wants to come face to face with the grizzly ghouls from immortal tombs, one only has to visit the jails.’”
Seems ridiculous, but after the prison officials instituted mandatory dance exercises, violence all but stopped. Now, through the power of the dance, these prisoners have learned how to live in relative harmony ... relative to their situation as prisoners in a Philippine correctional facility, that is.
And even while they perform Thriller, it seems they are resisting “the evil of the thriller.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o
Couple fun info facts:
- This is not the final, polished routine. They are just practicing.
- The “Girlfriend” is actually a transsexual meth dealer.
- This same mandatory dance exercise was instituted in a nearby women’s correctional facility. They take their inspiration not from Michael Jackson, but from - where else? - Sister Act. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CPg9GWBoL0
Visit byronfgarcia.com for more on CPDRC and Byron Garcia’s story.