Dancers dazzle Oakway diners

Next time they promise to work on the element of surprise.

“Definitely,” 73-year-old Dick Walker said Saturday evening. “We’re going to talk about that at our next meeting.”

That would be the next meeting of a recently formed “senior flash mob” group inspired by Walker, a retired Eugene business owner, who says he got the idea watching YouTube videos.

“To be honest, I had a Scotch about 11 o’clock at night, and I was watching the Internet,” Walker said, standing in the middle of the courtyard at Oakway Center. “I wanted to show that seniors could have a life and do exciting things like this.”

Two months ago, he put an ad in The Register-Guard asking other seniors 60 and older to join him in this new venture. But it was a posting in the “Buzzworthy” spot on the cover of the newspaper’s Sunday Oregon Life section on May 19, with Walker’s e-mail address listed, that resulted in contacts from 116 people, some in their 80s.

Flash mobs involve a group of people suddenly appearing in a public place to perform a dance or other routine. The element of surprise, naturally, is a key to pulling off a successful flash mob.

But there were so many folks ages 60 to 80 milling around the Oakway courtyard for about 30 minutes Saturday that most folks knew something was up.

“I think everyone here pretty much knew,” said Kim Williams, marketing director at Oakway Center and part of the family that owns the mall. Williams was having dinner with her mother, Linda Korth, at Chapala Mexican Restaurant when the fun began.

“I thought it’d be a hoot,” Korth said of her response when Walker contacted her for permission to perform the flash mob dance. Oakway Center provided the sound system.

It began just after 6 p.m. when Robert Schwartz of the Eugene Dance Studio, who’s been working with the group and helping them choreograph their inaugural routine, put the theme music from the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises” on the sound system provided by Oakway Center.

Suddenly, all those older folks with canes began to assemble. Right out front was a short man of 75, dressed in a seersucker suit and straw hat. Was it Izzy Whetstine, the perennial Eugene mayoral candidate who played the maintenance guy in “Animal House” who saws off the dead horse’s legs?

“I was born to show off,” Whetstine said.

The Batman music morphed into George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” as sung by the late Lena Horne. The seniors were dancing slowly as they continued moving into three lines and then — rap music?

Turns out the song was actually a remix of “I Got Rhythm” and rapper Q-Tip’s “Take the Lead.”

Now the seniors were jumping from side to side and waving their hands in the air.

Who could dance with us/ Who could stand with us

Look at us tonight/ We lookin’ fabulous

Freshed it up to def/ And we just movin’ out on the town

Puttin’ on our dance shoes/ And one foot in, one foot out

Sexy salsa, what’s this all about?

“That they had the courage to do it, I thought that was great,” said John Roy Wilson, 70, who watched with his girlfriend, Sara Mitchell, 68. The two had been invited by friends involved in the flash mob who didn’t lead on as to exactly what might happen.

Now, Wilson and Mitchell want in on the next one. (Hint: It might be at Valley River Center).

“We asked: How do we get into this group?” Wilson said. “We’re geezers. We qualify.”