It’s 12:53 Sunday morning-the last moments of Dance Marathon 2010. After 30 hours and 10 blocks of dancing, we have only seven minutes left. The famous piano introduction to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin‘” starts and one last shot of adrenaline begins pumping through my veins to the beat.
Arms drape across shoulders and the entire tent starts to sway or, perhaps as Woody from Toy Story put it, “fall with style.” Back and forth, the group falls first to the left and then to the right. If it wasn’t for our now-ruined sense of rhythm, which had half of us leaning clockwise and the rest counterclockwise, we might have just collapsed.
This was my first year participating in DM, but I know now it isn’t going to be my last.That’s strange for me to say, because as far as I could tell beforehand, DM required two basic skills: the ability to pull an all-nighter and the ability to dance.
First off, I don’t dance; I flail.
People have tried explaining it to me before and I understand the basic idea-shaking your hips while simultaneously jumping up and down, bobbing your head and waving your arms. And I can do all of those things, but the problem is synchronizing it into anything that resembles dancing.
Nevertheless, the point is I was beyond nervous to spend 30 hours thrashing around the dance floor like a fish out of water. No, that’s not right. It would be more like a large tuna crowd surfing at a heavy metal concert. There was no doubt in my mind there would be casualties.
Some will try to make the argument that by the end of it all, you’ve had so much practice everyone walks out great dancers. That’s simply not true. Bad dancers stay bad dancers. What is true, however, is that good dancers don’t last much longer. Everyone gets tired and absolutely no one has enough moves to fill the entire time. The only difference is whether the degeneration starts halfway through the first block, or if you can make it until sunrise. I lasted about 25 minutes.
I did make it through the other 29 hours though and even managed to pick up a few new dance moves amidst the madness.
The easiest way to explain my survival is to redefine marathon. A marathon isn’t something anyone gets up and does. Runners spend months training, buy expensive shoes and eat plate after plate of pasta the night before. And despite a few trips to SPAC earlier that week, I checked in wearing my completely foldable, low top converse and sipping Jamba Juice, my final push for nutrition. My fate appeared bleak.
If you know the mythological origins of the marathon, then you know Pheidippides ran all the way from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greeks’ victory over the Persians. Spoiler alert: He proceeded to fall down on the spot and die from exhaustion.My experience wasn’t much different. When I finally did get to sleep early Sunday morning, I didn’t know if or when I would wake up next. But that’s just the result of the real nature of DM.
It’s something you figure out how to do by doing it. Mothers lift up semi-trucks to save their children, students write midterm papers the night before to save their grades and we were dancing to save homeless youth.
Right?
To an extent, yes. I would be lying though if I said that’s the only reason I did it.Please put down your pitchforks and give me a paragraph or two to explain myself. Yes, it feels nice to play the martyr and identify with a greater social cause, but alone that’s not enough to make it through or come back year after year.
You need to be motivated on an individual level too. That might mean dancing for the rush of endorphins during Block 10, to strengthen friendships or even to meet girls. And don’t be mistaken, that’s not selfish. It’s rational.
The only way to make DM work is to enjoy it, to make it meaningful for you. Eventually you’re either laughing or yawning, so laugh. There are plenty of opportunities if you’re not afraid to embarrass yourself. Throw away any sense of pride you came in with and shake your butt.
DM did have a few shortcomings though, and most of those linked back to Dancer Relations. If their job is to be the annoying voice motivating you to keep dancing, they do their job too well.
The problem is the disconnect between their expectations for the event and reality. After an entire year of planning, it makes sense they’re going to be a little obsessive about making sure everything runs perfectly. But they live in a fantasy world and my stomach and bladder do not.
In particular, it was right before the jog outside that I hit my limit. Dancer Relations had been keeping the bathrooms closed during breaks, something I didn’t mind too much because the lines would have been ridiculous.
My friend and I came back from popping ibuprofen and power napping and found a place in the line of people crossing their legs anxiously. Suddenly, the people in front of us started to get out of line and walk back into the tent.
I walked up to the front of the line and asked what was going on. The restroom liaison from Dancer Relations explained the bathrooms were locked until further notice. That didn’t seem right.
After some tough questioning, one of the higher-ups finally journeyed over. At first it was difficult to recognize him because he wasn’t wearing the same plastered smile he had been showcasing on stage a few hours earlier. He wasn’t happy.
He went on to very rudely ridicule us, saying it would be a tragedy if we were the victims of an “accident” while we were dancing. Eventually he gave in and let us leave, but only after cursing us out and threatening us that we weren’t to tell anyone we had left.
It’s unfortunate but that person, whose name I never found out, was the manifestation of what I saw as DM’s greatest weakness: failure to reconcile the social incentives with real, human needs.
That’s not what I will remember though.
I’ll remember it being about 12:56 a.m. and the leaning circle of karaoke had broken out into a leaping frenzy of air guitar solos. I was surrounded in an embrace of sweat and tear-soaked arms and had never been happier.[email protected]
