If we’re being honest, Netflix Wednesday is, for much of its run, kind of bla-boring, unimaginative, and just a little too eager to borrow concepts we’ve seen before. But give it four episodes (I know, I know) and you’ll at least witness one of the best wacky dance scenes TV has done in a while. In an explosion of waving arms, high kicks and piercing gazes, Jenna Ortega gives Wednesday (and Wednesday) a school dance to remember.

What is the name chosen for the school ball of the Nevermore Academy? The Rave’N Dance, of course. Our lady of black dresses and pigtails has little interest in the party, but finds herself with a date on her doorstep anyway, thanks to a little interference from her favorite disembodied hand, Thing. (Thing also snatches a dress from her for the occasion using the “five-finger cut”.)

The stage is set from the start for a set piece. The Rave’N dance, like most school dances shown on television, seems much more expensive than a typical prom. From ice blue lighting to crisp white accessories, this dance has style. And then marching on Wednesday, see you in tow, in a surprisingly fluffy dress (still collared). Cue “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps.

It is at this precise moment that Wednesday— a series that, despite Tim Burton, often feels starved of flashiness — is finally starting to work. (At least, as long as Jenna Ortega waves her arms.)

But let’s talk about some of those dance moves. Sometimes Ortega’s movements telegraph “the corpse bride”; his arms and neck hang down as if suspended by a puppet. Next, she’ll shake an arm with the sharpness of Britney Spears on her Onyx tour, but at an angle that, again, might make her look dead. The camerawork in these shots only adds to the magic – soaring, at one point, to capture the piercing look on Ortega’s face as she throws her head back to the music.

Wednesday’s presence at Rave ‘N Dance might have been an unexpected twist for her peers, but the Addams Family actually has a rich history with dancing. The original series featured several episodes in which various characters attempted to teach Lurch – Frankenstein’s monstrous servant, best known for his moaning “Did you ring?” – how to groove. First it’s Gomez and Morticia in Season 1, then Wednesday offers Lurch another lesson in Season 2.

And who could forget the fun, almost deadly tango of Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia from Addams Family Values who gave a whole new meaning to the words “fire on the dance floor”?

It’s nice to see that Wednesday continues this age-old Addams tradition. But who was behind this work of choreographic chaos? Apparently Ortega herself choreographed the thing in a week, then shot it while sick with COVID.

“I’m not a dancer,” Ortega said NME, and I’m sure it’s obvious. She said she received the song about a week before it was time to shoot. On the morning of the shoot, however, she said she woke up feeling “like I’d been hit by a car and a little goblin had let loose in my throat and was scratching the walls of my esophagus”.

Production gave Ortega medication between takes, she said NME, as they waited for a positive COVID test result. (MGM, which produces WednesdayTold NME that “strict COVID protocols were followed and once the positive test was confirmed, production removed Jenna from set.”) Although Ortega thinks she could have performed the scene better had she been healthy, he there was no time to resume the dance.

The good news is that she kills him anyway. A source of inspiration ? Siouxsie Sioux, of British rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees. Ortega told NME that she binged the video for ‘Happy House,’ from the band’s third album Kaleidoscope-and that she might have picked up some moves from Siouxsie Sioux for her own number.

“There’s a bit about the Wednesday dance where I jump to the left and have my arms at my side,” she said, “and that’s something that [Siouxsie] did so on stage later in his career.

With inspiration like that (and a family legacy of choreographic excellence), it’s no wonder that wowing the high school class on Wednesday was a breeze.