So if you follow me in real life or any aspect of social media, you probably know that I participated in Northwestern’s Dance Marathon this weekend, and danced for 30 hours.

Read on for all the details…

What is it?

Basically, DM consists of the following:

1. Raise $800+ with a dancing partner
2. Dance for 30 hours

The relationship between these two points is debatable.  You have to raise the money if you want to dance, but the money you raise isn’t contingent on you dancing or not.  Basically, the actual dancing part serves as a motivator for both you and the people you’re asking for money.

Some other quick details- the 30 hours are split into 10 3-hour blocks, each of them themed.  Between blocks you get 10 minute breaks to change clothes and get off your feet for a precious few minutes.  The primary beneficiary this year was Children’s Heart Foundation, which raises money for congenital heart disease research. 

Why’d you do it?

I can pretty much boil my original motivation down to one thing: visiting DM last year.  I went during the afternoon, and (don’t tell Dancer Relations) snuck onto the floor to dance with the Willard team for a little.  The afternoon is a tough part of DM, and it was clear everyone was tired, but they were holding up.  When I went back up to the visitor’s platform, the DJ put on Bad Romance (Gaga’s latest single at the time) and the tent EXPLODED.  The crowd that was sort of half-heartedly grooving a few minutes earlier was jumping, pumping their fists and singing at the top of their lungs.  Such a display of energy and power from a group that I knew had been dancing for ~20 hours already was… well, inspirational.  

When I left the tent I couldn’t stop watching the livestream and checking all the student media coverage of the event.  I said to myself, “I HAVE to do this next year.”

What was it like?

In some ways it was what I expected, in other ways, not so much.

For one thing, if there’s one thing DM is good at, its constantly making you feel like just a fucking awesome person.  Every time you exit or enter the tent for block breaks, there is a crowd of DM volunteers cheering for you and giving you high fives.  Not to mention the fact that almost every block they brought in someone who’s children had been personally affected by congenital heart disease- most of them inspiring success stories.  Every time, it just made me dance harder.

The first few blocks seemed long, but physically weren’t that taxing- my feet didn’t really start hurting until into block 5 or so.  Of course, once they started hurting, they didn’t really stop.  Other than my feet though, I’m actually pretty impressed with how well my body put up with it.  I guess my exercise leading up the event (running two miles every other day, plus other cardio occasionally) paid off, as I know other people were getting sore and stiff in their legs and knees.

No, the actual hard part was the sleep deprivation part.  Everyone told me, “you’ll hit a wall, and then you’ll just break through”.  And it’s easy to hear and accept, but when it happens it still really sucks.  My wall came during Block 6, during the late morning.  I was zoning out to the repetitive hip-hop remix beats and struggling to stay awake, and my feet were hurting big time.  I remember things feeling hazy.

And then, a song came on and it was like a bolt of clarity hit me- everything seemed clear, I started moving more and singing- it was like I was a new person.  And that song that reenergized me was, strangely enough:

Yeah.  A freaking rickroll saved me from passing out.  Weird.

I should also probably say at this point, after going on about how macho I am and how it didn’t hurt that much, that I can’t exactly say I danced a normal DM 30 hours.  You see, the weather out on the lakefill where the tent was got really bad, and we had to take two breaks for them to make the tent safer.  Those two breaks amounted to about a block’s worth, so technically I’m only really a member of the 27 hour club.

I was really kind of upset about this, as it was my first DM and I felt kinda like I was cheating by getting long breaks.  That being said, I didn’t sleep during them, but I still got to get off my feet.

But 10th block (the last one) really made me forget about that.  Myself and some friends got to play with a young kid who was alive because of congenital heart disease research.  That’s really something incredible to think about.  

Willard took third place in the large group category, raising nearly $38,000, so that was really cool.  We beat our total from last year by over $16k.

And then, to top it all off, this happened:

I couldn’t contain myself.  This is the first time DM has raised over $1,000,000, and I was so damn proud to be a part of it.  I still get shivers watching it.

That one tent could hold so much positivity, so much energy, so much collective spirit was really amazing.  If you’re at Northwestern, you really should do DM at least once.  It’s an event that challenges you in all the right ways, and at the end of the day does great things for the world.  Thanks for reading this far.