Dance Marathon

Dance Marathon was an interesting experience. There was definitely a lot that could be improved upon and that was worse than last year, but there was some good parts too. I'll focus on the bad first so we can end on a high note, shall I?

The most major problem this year was the lack of advertising. If you weren't already a part of Dance Marathon, or if your sorority or fraternity didn't already have a team, you didn't know anything about it. NOBODY knew it was happening, and thus the turnout sucked. As a consequence of this, we raised less money, had a ton of leftover t-shirts, and had only 5 non-staff dancers stay the whole night. FIVE!

I'm not counting the pledges. There was a fraternity that required their pledges to stay the whole night, but they snuck off and slept and ended up sitting down, so I don't count them. They didn't participate (except for when we played dodgeball) and had surly attitudes that made me want to shove cancerous children in their faces til they'd cried so much they were dehydrated.

Because nobody stayed the whole night, our Schedule of Activities kind of disintegrated by 3 a.m. We just gave up on the games and teaching that god-awful morale dance and let everybody chill, which was okay, except you got really bored and really tired really fast. But our schedule was pretty much shit anyway. We didn't start until an hour later than we were supposed to, so everybody had a lot of bored-down time when they arrived--not a good way to start a 16 hour dance marathon.

One of my fellow morale team members had a lot of good suggestions for what to do next year, and she's planning on joining the exec team to get her voice heard. Some of her more stellar ideas were: a bouncy castle, mood lighting (bright lights does not promote dancing), better advertising, not having it form 5 p.m.-9 a.m., but from 12 p.m.-4 a.m. or something, NOT making it longer, a simpler morale dance, vegetarian/Catholic during Lent food options, not allowed to leave, and tons of others that made a lot of sense to me at 5 in the morning that I'm having trouble remembering right now.

So that was the bad, but what about the good? There were some definite improvements from last year. First of all, I didn't have to pay extra for the morale tank top, and I got to get a t-shirt of every color since we had so many left-over. The morale dance was a full two mintues shorter than last year, although I still think it's a little too complicated for the masses to learn and memorize at 4 in the morning.

The entertainment this year was also a lot of fun. We had TigerRoar and Take Note (Clemson's premier a cappella groups) come and sing to us, which was fabulous! Clemson's gospel choir came, the dance team, Tigerstrut, a yoga instructor, a relaxation instructor, a breakdancing teacher, an isolations teacher, a jazzer-size instructor, a zumba instructor, and a belly-dancing teacher. We also had a lot of fun games that worked well this year (or at least better than last year). The most successful games we had were a fun partner game that I think is called Monkey-in-a-Tree, Human Knot (*cough*my idea*cough*) , Hula Hoop Pass, and Dodgeball (*cough*my idea*cough*). So there was a lot going on and plenty to keep you entertained...in the beginning. I don't know why but from the hours between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. we had NO entertainment. I understand people might not want to come out and teach a jazzer-size class that late, but really? Those are the toughest hours! That's when we need all the distraction from our aching feet and drooping eyes that we can get!

I will say that I was a heck of a lot less sore this year than last year. I don't know if it's just because I knew what to expect or what, but I felt fine...well, not completely fine. My feet hurt like crazy and my sleep schedule is all out of whack, but it wasn't as dramatic as last year.

I know that overall this has been a pretty bitchy post, but I don't want to discourage you from participating in Dance Marathon at all. This is Clemson's third year doing DM, and we obviously still have a lot of bugs to work out, but it is totally worth it! Because the tiredness and aching feet and piss-poor four-in-the-morning attitude is all FTK, For The Kids. And that's what it's all about.

If you want to learn more about Dance Marthon, go here. I encourage you to do it!

While this year's Dance Marathon might not have been everything I was hoping it would be, I still think it falls under the category of 'do something'. So that's another step towards my goal :) It's the bright side, bitches, the bright side!