zombie dances

Noun

zombie dance (plural zombie dances)

1. A type of dance in which participants use dance moves that mimic the undead, often combined with a masquerade and costumes.
   • The Minneapolis police did not share the fun spirit at a "zombie dance party” held in July 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.2008, Shawn McIntosh, Marc Leverette, Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, page 15
2. A ritual Caribbean dance in which participants enter a trance state and symbolically die and are born again.
   • 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.2006, Journal of Haitian Studies - Volumes 12-13, page 20
3. (figuratively) A sequence of events leading to someone feeling dead inside, and the actions of the individual as they experience that sequence.
   • 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.1973, Anne Zoltan, Annie: the Female Experience, page 72
4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see zombie, dance.; a dance performed by zombies.
   • " Welcome to the zombie dance! " Taft bellowed. Zombies began filing in, hundreds of them, filling up the gym, heading in our direction.2009, E. Van Lowe, Never Slow Dance With a Zombie, page 207