Dancing for 30 hours straight wouldn’t constitute “fun” to most people outside an insane asylum. But every year, hundreds of Northwestern students toss logic aside to participate in Dance Marathon, a more-than-day long dance-a-palooza that makes a triathlon look like a tea party. Yeah, it’s for a great cause, but why couldn’t students put on a less physically torturous event, like a telethon or a demolition derby?
If you’re dancing this weekend, you need all the help you can get to survive NU’s version of Man vs. Wild. Thankfully, you have me, a survivor of DM 2006, to turn to as you brace for the 30-hour Top 40-laced ordeal. If you follow my helpful hints, however, you will come out of Dance Marathon A-OK, or at least with minimal cramps.
10. Get sleep
As hour after hour slowly pass by, your body is going to want to shut down and crumple onto the ground, hopefully entering a slumber you won’t wake up from until Memorial Day. Unfortunately, DM officials aren’t going to let you go comatose on the dance floor, and, once the boogying commences, expect to stay awake for all 30 hours.
So, make sure to get plenty of rest before the dancing doomsday. We might be in college and have the mindset of “Oh, we only get to do this once, we better stay up until four in the morning and do something useful like gossip,” but try to get some shuteye before the big day. Even if you can only fit in a nap Friday afternoon between classes, it’s better than nothing. Trust me, after eight hours, you are going to slowly start to lose consciousness, so any pre-game sleep can only help in the long run.
9. Use registration time wisely
Shocking revelation time! DM isn’t actually 30 hours, it’s 32 hours when you factor in the registration beforehand. You may be thinking “Big deal! It’s only two hours of sitting around and not doing anything. I don’t even have to move.” If you go in with this mindset, you are doomed to be overwhelmed and out of your mind before they even play “Toxic.”
The two hours before DM are all about mental preparation. Sitting there doing nothing isn’t going to help you endure the Academy Award-paced world of DM. You need to get your mind away from Louis Room. Get sleep in the hall. Work on your costumes for the various themes. Buy merchandise (I danced for thirty hours and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. And the inability to walk for thirty days). Load up on free pizza until you feel ill, and then see if you can get out of DM citing medical emergency (I kid, I kid. Just jump out a window, much quicker). Prepare yourself for the pilgrimage-like experience that is Dance Marathon, regardless of how much damage it does to your wallet and/or stomach.
8. Pace yourself
Eventually, the DM officials stationed in the halls of Norris will gleefully instruct you that it’s time to dance, and you will rush into a raucous Louis Room full of blaring music and shiny decorations. This sensation of finally getting to cut loose after hours of waiting may make you want to do your best America’s Got Talent dance routine, but hold back on the breakin’. Keep in mind, you have 29 MORE HOURS of poppin and lockin in front of you, and if you jitterbug and running-man and [insert popular dance the youth do nowadays] away all your energy in the first block, you are in for a painful time.
So, don’t overdo it at the beginning. Dance, but don’t try to imitate You Got Served. Bob and weave, have a good time, but make sure you don’t exhaust yourself early on. This is a fundraising event after all, not Riverdance.
7. Bring earplugs
Like most mainstream dance parties, the music at Dance Marathon is terrible. A mix of contemporary junk, outdated 80’s cuts and ironic trash mostly from the 90’s (Hey, it’s Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” let’s dance to this even though it has no redeemable musical characteristics and should only be played at exorcisms). Sure there are a few okay moments (I think they played Daft Punk twice), but most of the time all you get is Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys. At least you kids get “My Love” this year.
But, amongst all of the audio rubbish, there is always one block of music that towers over everything else as the crappiest of the crap. Last March, it was the headache-inducing Techno block, three-hours of rave-suitable slop and pounding electro beats more aggravating than a jackhammer. I didn’t think the pure terror of Techno block could be topped, but they did it this year with a block devoted to TV themes and… wait for it… show tunes. That’s right, since there is no Constitutional amendment banning them from ever being played, you get show tunes. For two hours, you get to groove to such try-to-stop-me-from-blowing-my-brains-out tracks like that annoying song from Rent and that annoying song from High School Musical. Reggae dance block will be more like Coachella after this.
So, the moral of the story is… try to zone out the brain-killing Broadway sing-a-longs.
6. Keep costumes simple
Each block comes with a dress-up theme, with the intent of spicing up the chunks of hip-weakening dancing. Apparel periods of the past include dressing up as a “Gangsta” or as your dancing/money raising partner. This year, expect to don workout garb and beach wear.
But don’t go overboard with the duds. The 10-minute break periods between blocks are the most valuable periods of time in all of DM. You can actually sit down/rest your legs against the wall/gnaw your feet off with your teeth to end the misery, and brace for the next joint-testing period. But if you bring along too intricate a costume, you will waste your only resting time attempting to put on clothes. I can’t stress this enough: Every second of free time you have is a second you aren’t dancing, and those are the most important seconds you have at all of DM. So don’t waste them struggling to put on your Miss Saigon attire for show tunes block.
5. Pretend the morning doesn’t exist
The first night of dancing isn’t all that bad. You let loose on the dance floor, have fun with your friends and enjoy the overall presentation. Everything’s going great.
Until dawn.
If you wanted to pin-point the exact moment most dancers enter zombie-like state, look no further than the break of day, when everyone who was having such a fun time only a few minutes ago realize “Wait, we have an entire DAY of this left?! Oh sweet merciful god….” and collapse to the ground. Sunrise is the turning point of DM, the moment when the strongest souls turn to dust and not even Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” can offer hope.
To avoid this early-morning existential crisis, do your best to block the concept of time out of your head and pretend you are stuck in some sort of perpetual night. This is without a doubt the most difficult tip to follow, since the people behind Dance Marathon mistakenly think surviving the first night is some sort of milestone, and remind you how you only have one day left. It’s almost a sick joke, as they play The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” and open the blinds for a little bit (letting in light beams that will make you feel like Nosferatu), as if they are mocking you, a cruel almost-hazing event. Try your best to block out the new day, even if you have to curl up into a corner Blair Witch-style until the room gets dark again.
4. Eat food. Always. At all costs.
Every block, the fine folks at DM (yeah, I said they were torturing you in the last point, but eventually you stop caring and undergo Stockholm Syndrome) wheel out various foodstuffs ranging from slices of pizza (I hope you like pizza, there is a lot of it) to fruit to cookies. These snacks are essential if you hope to last during DM, as they both give you much needed energy to keep on dancing and give you something to do besides mindlessly shake from side to side.
When the food plates come out, don’t be afraid to resort to your most animalistic form when trying to get nourishment. Imagine the mad dash for pizza as a sort of Lord of the Flies, only soundtracked by 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.” Dance Marathon may be a philanthropic event, but the actual dancing part is a free-for-all, man against man all for the singular pursuit of a piece of celery with some peanut butter smeared on it. Even items you normally wouldn’t even look become world class delicacies. Last year, I frantically grabbed a fruit smoothie that tasted like a combination of old strawberries and cesspool. Yet I chugged the whole thing down anyway. The drive for food during DM will make you do crazy things, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get through.
3. Have your friends visit
It’s important to remember DM isn’t some bizarre dimension you’ve stumbled on, unable to escape, and that there is a life outside of Norris University Center. So, a simple visit from friends during visiting hours (like prison, huh?) will give you a much-needed boost of reality and a reminder everything will be OK in a few short hours. Make sure you let your buds back at the dorm to know they can (and should) stop by sometime Saturday and say “hello.” And, if you have really good friends, they might smuggle you in a little caffeine help.
Not that I’m suggesting it or anything.
2. Don’t cheat
Last year, one of my friends slept through two blocks of DM by hiding under a pile of coats in the waiting room. My pal probably felt a whole lot more energized and prepared for the rest of the night than I did (who, by that point, resembled a man stranded on a desert island for a decade), but I had the better sense of fulfillment come night’s end. I lasted all of DM and, even if I couldn’t feel my toes, I was proud I did it.
Don’t take shortcuts come the big weekend. You’ve already put a ton of effort into raising money (unless you robbed a bank/begged your parents for cash at the last minute), so why devalue all the hard work you’ve already done by breaking the rules? Staying awake the whole time is tough, but try your best, because the feeling of actually knowing you survived 30 freakin hours of dancing is pretty gratifying.
Plus, you don’t want to go to sleep for 28 hours with a guilty conscience.
1. Enjoy the last block
I’ve probably made DM sound like quite the ordeal, less a fun time and more like Boot Camp. And, for 27 hours, it kinda is. I mean, Dance Marathon workers aren’t holding you down and forcing burning liquids down your throat, but dancing around for more than a day takes its toll, and there will be times when you are questioning why you are doing this in the first place, if not the existence of a god.
Until the last block.
Call it divine intervention, call it runner’s high, whatever, but when they tell you to get back on the dance floor one last time, all the pain and desire to go home disappears and you actually want to dance again. Suddenly, you don’t loathe the pounding beats, and you actually have a good time.
Plus, the final two hours make you realize why you are even doing this in the first place. When you find out how much the event has raised that year, and the giant novelty check is presented and balloons fall from the ceiling, you realize you haven’t wasted your time and health dancing, but have actually done an honorable deed helping those in need. And for a second, you forget about being tired and being sore and just focus on how you’ve actually helped doing something good in the world.
And then you should get sleep immediately, because you just danced for 30 hours. That really isn’t healthy.