We’re trying to capture the faces and voices of as many dancers as possible during DM 2008.

		Justin Barbin, Weinberg freshman “I just keep on thinking– hold on– let me think– it’s like, it’s like we are one big hippie colony, like we’re a community of dancing people. There comes a point when exhaustion just takes over you and you aren’t even aware of who you are anymore.”"
		Robin Levy, Weinberg freshman “Well, I remember when I was sitting and watching something… and I think I just fell asleep. I’m not even sure.”
		Laura Kelly, Music and Weinberg freshman “I just can’t believe I’ve been here for 30 hours.”
		Jed Feder, Communication freshman “I had to leave this morning to go play with drumline and when I walked outside, it was light, and it was snowing. It was so strange.”
		Kelly Horejs, Weinberg freshman “I guess my perception of time has just gotten really mixed up. I thought it was nighttime at 9 in the morning.”

Nobody honestly expects Dance Marathon to stick to the musical themes they attach to each block. It’s just overwhelming to have to come up with 30 hours of popular music, especially when tight themes like “remixes” and “disco” constrict options. Most of Dance Marathon’s 2008 blocks followed this un-adherence strategy, but big ups to block 9, which has done a great job of not overstepping its musical bounds.

This three-hour-period’s them is “one-hit wonders,” a category loaded with musical artists now considered ironic because they were just so stupid. Even though the definition of “one-hit wonder” is a bit mysterious (many artists with this label usually have two or three hit singles off the momentum of the first one), this categorization of music zeros in on songs trapped in specific time periods, usually the early 90s. DM didn’t fudge the meaning of one-hit, they played (mostly) artists who had a slight stroke of success before vanishing into obscurity completely. What made it so good was they even dug out great tracks most people forget about.

Songs seemed pull from a “one-hit wonders” CD: you had your MC Hammer, your Deep Blue Something and your Baja Men. Obviously, these songs suck, but props to Dance Marathon to sticking to a theme - when you say one-hit-wonder, I expect one-hit-wonder, and these worked great. All the obvious ones have appeared so far (yes, of course “Baby Got Back” got spun and received one of the loudest ovations of the night), but a few more obscure cuts made the setlist. Alice Deejay’s “Better off Alone” and Violent Femmes “Blister in the Sun” being slightly-more-obscure standouts. And, although not terribly unknown, having 69 Boyz’s “Tootsie Roll” belt out of the speaker system guaranteed this would be the best block of the night.

One major mistake though….they played Soulja Boy’s smash hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy).” Now, in about three months, Soulja Boy will probably be a bonafide one-hit-wonder. But for right now, he’s still one of the most talked about artists in the land with one of the most played singles in the country. Throwing him in here just didn’t make sense at all. Use it either in the “You Got Served” block a few hours ago or save it for the final block, when everyone could have done that ridiculous dance together. Not sure what the logic here is.

Still, one Superman-sized mistake aside, the music during the second-to-last block has been great considering the lame theme. One more hour until the biggest block of all.

After 24 hours of dancing, we asked DM dancers if they would choose sleep or sex (in a bed, of course).

A surprising 37 percent (out of 77 surveyed) chose sex over sleep, and 63 percent chose sleep.

Of those that said they would have sex, the vast majority were men. Women chose sleep almost unanimously.

“Are you kidding me?” most said, before answering sleep.

What was even better than the surprisingly steamy results? The boy who asked, “With you?” before answering.

Oh, sweet delirium.

We’re trying to capture the faces and voices of as many dancers as possible during DM 2008.

		Joe Buckley, SESP sophomore “The blast-off video was really good. Very epic sounding. It put us in the right mood”
		Jackie Hunzinger, Medill senior “Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine.” It is just so optimistic, and it came on when I was really doing poorly. I really needed that.”
		A.J. Aguado, Communications sophomore “Boomshaka. Great. Really lively. Picked up energy.”
		Cara Rifkin, Communications Junior “Dancing with a girl from Bear Necessities, Madison. It was really special to me, and definitely my favorite musical moment of the night.”

It may be Block 9 of DM but Weinberg sophomore Brooke Weitz still has plenty of energy.

Swinging her arms around and jumping up and down, Weitz bounced to “Come on Eileen” with Weinberg freshman Max Brock and SESP sophomore Kelly Lynch in Club DM.

“The closer to the end you get to the end, the more [pumped up] you get… except for in the middle,” Weitz said.

“It’s all about adrenaline,” Brock yelled.

How late into DM it is does player a factor, Weitz said, but not how you would think.

“The more tired you get, you stop caring how much your legs hurt,” Weitz said.

Club DM, introduced this year to handle record-breaking enrollment, earned positive reviews from dancers, though some said the heated tent had temperature problems and sometimes felt disconnected from the rest of the marathon.

Dance Marathon organizers erected a heated tent on Norris South Lawn to provide for the 750 enrolled dancers. The tent is connected to Norris by a heated corridor, and dancers rotate through the room, spending anywhere from one to three blocks in the tent.

In previous years, organizers limited dancer enrollment, and kept a waiting list for overflow dancers. The turnout this year was so large that organizers decided to search for alternative ways to provide for the extra dancers. After debating using other on-campus facilities to hold the larger crowd, organizers decided to utilize the heated tent.

Many dancers found the new pavilion a welcome change of pace after spending hours in the Louis Room.

“It was a welcome transition,” said Weinberg sophomore Liz Brezinski.

Julia Padvoiskis, a McCormick senior, agreed. “I don’t mind moving around. It’s a nice change of scenery,” she said.

Despite the heated tent, dancers still cited temperature issues as one drawback to “Club DM.”

“I think the biggest issue is temperature control,” Serene Chen, a SESP sophomore, said.

“The temperature isn’t regulated well, but otherwise the tent is fine,” Communications sophomore Alex Hunstein said.

Others said that while the change of pace was welcome, they felt disconnected from the rest of the action and other dancers in the Louis Room.

“It’s a nice change of settings, but sometimes it’s hard to get the energy up in both locations because the DJs are only in one place,” SESP freshman Rachel Zinn said.

Dancers in “Club DM” watch on-stage action in the Louis Room from large overhead screens.

“There’s clearly more going on in the Louis Room,” Brezinski said. “I feel detached from the main action.”

We’re trying to capture the faces and voices of as many dancers as possible during DM 2008.

		Eric English, Weinberg freshman “Keeping my energy up the whole time. Luckily, I know a bunch of people from Willard who came out too. My friend’s energy rubs off on me. That’s how I got through.”
		Rachel Ferber, Weinberg freshman “Between breakfast and lunch was the toughest, it was like waking up really early, but without sleeping. I told myself this is only one day of my life, it’s going to suck. I accepted it, and things got better.”
		Daniel Hessel, Weinberg sophomore “Just the sheer exhaustion. I don’t have a choice, though, they don’t let you leave.”

Northwestern musical group Boomshaka entertained dancers sitting down for dinner around 5:30 in the Louis Room tonight. The performers, known for creating music using trashcans, chains and pipes a la Stomp, busted out all their junkyard tricks to entertain the tired audience. To hear Boomshaka’s clanging performance, check out the file below.

The warm, fuzzy feeling of charity pervading DM is not limited to the dance floor. At DM Spa, located in Wildcat Rooms I and II on the first floor of Norris, cosmetologist and aestheticians from Pivot Point and The Rub offered services including haircuts, massages, manicures and facial waxing.

The teams were kept busy all day long.

“This is the first time I’ve sat down since nine in the morning!” said Natalie Ruzgis, from The Rub, after finishing her last haircut around 5 p.m.

“We’ve all given nine or ten haircuts, nine or ten manicures,” added cosmetologist Priscilla Kenlock of The Rub. “And this is my day off!”

This is Kenlock’s second year coming to Northwestern to raise money for Dance Marathon. “And I definitely want to come back,” she said. “You guys have been great– giving us juice and popsicles and everything. I really enjoyed it. I like to do a lot of charity.”

“This is a nice change up, too, to not be worrying about money, and instead be giving back,” Ruzgis added.

The employees weren’t the only ones in the spirit of donating, either. “There were two women who donated their hair to locks of love today– we cut two big ponytails off,” Kenlock said.

“We’ve been working really hard, but it’s for a great cause,” Kenlock concluded.

Weinberg sophomore Kahn Fukui was a lot more optimistic about his hurt ankle at 2 a.m.

Almost 15 hours later, the story is a little different.

“My ankle is hurting a lot more,” he said. “Through out the night my condition deteriorated. It got a lot worse than I expected.”

To combat his discomfort, Fukui said he’s been taking several breaks and icing his ankle a lot.

Balancing on his one crutch during a quieter moment during DM, Fukui reflected on how his injury might’ve actually left him better off than most.

“It’s a long marathon, but I have it easy compared to the other dancers,” he said.

It’s a little after 4 p.m. Dancers have been on their feet for more than 21 hours. Block 7 just ended; three more to go. It was definitely the hardest block, many dancers admitted, the Louis Room of Norris lacked the contagion of energy it had just a few hours ago when dancers hit the halfway mark.

But Dov Shalman, a Weinberg junior and first-time dancer, said he’s surprisingly awake - mentally that is. “I thought I was going to get a lot more tired than I actually am,” he said. “It’s a lot more about my body getting tired rather than my mind.”

The vibe in Norris continued to fluctuate throughout the three-hour block. Looking around, there was a lot of side-to-side swaying, marking the dancers’ struggle to keep on their feet during the remaining blocks. After this block it will get better, one dancer said in passing.

But just when the energy was dipping into danger zone, Michael Jackson’s “ABC” came on and people began to bounce up and down, not holding back, like it was hour 29.

Artists, clockwise from top left: Rebecca Ramos, Communication sophomore; Douglas Hosking, Weinberg freshman; Samantha Beerman, Weinberg senior; Sasha Von Oldershausen, Weinberg sophomore; Patrick Pijls, Weinberg freshman; Jonathan Webster, Weinberg freshman; Eli Blum, Weinberg freshman.

We’re trying to capture the faces and voices of as many dancers as possible during DM 2008.

In this video: Michael Haas, Medill sophomore; Brendan Flannery, Communication sophomore; Katey Rusch, Medill sophomore; John Le, SESP junior; Alysa Teichman, Medill junior;
Anna Yan, Weinberg senior.

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You can get a snowball maker, sports tickets and paintings at the DM silent auction, but apparently what we really want is to get into graduate school. Kaplan is offering several test-prep courses, for anything from the LSAT to the MCAT, and they’re attracting the highest bids — some inching towards four figures.

The only item yet to be bid on? A package that includes a one-year subscription to the vehicle-sharing Zipcar service, food from Gino’s East and an autographed photo of Lost’s Matthew Fox. Somehow, this is less appealing than instant snowballs and several more years of cramming.

During the Apple’s Old Schoolhouse Rock Block, Michael Jackson’s classic pop song “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough” blasted out of speakers at DM. Dancers went off the wall to the song, moving and grooving to one of the King of Pop’s greatest songs. Check it out below.

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