Participants filled out their forms online and then brought in a printed waiver and their registration fee to Norris. According to a Dance Marathon press release, the organization is moving towards a paperless registration system in the future.

“In the past, everything was done in paper,” said Allister Wenzel, DM’s finance co-chair, in a press release. “The Exec board and Finance committee would spend hours upon hours the week after registration meticulously entering the data from these paper forms into a Google spreadsheet. We saw online registration as the future, not only in streamlining the workload on our end, but also allowing the dancers to register in a more convenient way and being environmentally-friendly in the process.”

The first all-DM dancer meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 27 from 7:30-8:30 p.m. in Fisk 217.

Marlee Matlin was eliminated from Dancing with the Stars last night in the most shocking results show of the season.

Matlin has been the inspiration behind the season, not only because she had never done ballroom dancing before, but because she couldn’t hear the music she was dancing to. The Oscar winner (in 1986 for Children of a Lesser God) has been deaf all of her life.

After hearing the news, she signed, “You know what? All I can say is thank you to the judges. I have the utmost respect for you and I want to thank the most magnificent Fabian for giving me the most beautiful art of dance in my life,” through her interpretor.

Week 7 of the competition continues on Monday night at 7 o’clock on ABC.

Look at all of the super-excited students getting into the song, dancing and stuff. Wait, not really, at least not until the chorus. I’m not a huge “dance-at-concerts” type of guy, but the people who went to the A&O Ball could have shown a little life, especially during the group’s most famous song (since they didn’t play “Accidentally in Love”). Whatever, they coughed up the $15, not me.

And now I’ll never write about this band again.

The answer: All his songs sound exactly like “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Except worse. He’s lucky to be immortalized as a sub-par Internet joke and not as one of the most awkward music video personalities of all-time.

Take his song “Whenever You Need Somebody.” It opens with the exact same drum sound as his more famous song, and soon goes into verses that…sound exactly like “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Save a few Daft Punky electro sounds, the only thing separating this track from his other, All Your Base Belong to Us-loved song is the video. Mr. Astley doesn’t awkwardly dance around at night wearing a trench-coat, but rather dances around awkwardly inside a TV while wearing a sports jacket.

“Together Forever” cops “Never Gonna” even worse, simply slowing down the verse a tad and apparently taking place inside a rainbow.

Rick Astley made a stunning number of bad music videos showcasing music that sounds exactly like “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The next song adds female backing vocals (!) to his brand of amateurish Euro-pop, while the video features more awkward dancing, but also a scene where Rick tries on different clothes. Brilliant!

And then there is “Sleeping,” his single from 2001. You could call it evolution, but you could also call it Cher-like trash.

So, while you laugh at Rick Astley’s super-deep voice and bad dance moves this April Fools’ Day, remember what a miracle it is that he gets this much attention at all for anything. Some people would feel hurt they are remembered as an Internet joke. Rick Astley should value it as the most shining moment of his career.

I basically just Rickrolled you for an entire blog post. Yikes.

*No sources whatsoever on this

Showstoppers

1. First Song: “Thriller” by Michael Jackson

My plan for this block involves three huge songs stacked at the start, middle and end of this period. They are more or less interchangeable, but I say kick the block off with “Thriller,” a massive dance song with a slightly slow buildup. The key to these three songs are awesome dances, and “Thriller’s” choreography is pretty close to universal.

2. Middle Song: “Y.M.C.A.” by Village People

This could be the National Anthem. Everyone loves pretending to look like various letters, and all shame goes out the window once this 70’s classic starts up. An extremely easy dance to do, and everyone in the Louis Room (and that tent thing) will be doing it for sure.

3. Final Song: “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” by Soulja Boy

You knew this was coming. At DM 2009, you’d probably drop this in the “guilty pleasure” or “music meant to cause great shame to the world” block, but DM 2008 comes at just the right time, where Soulja Boy’s novelty hasn’t worn off completely yet, and the song still causes legions of naive college kids to “superman that ohhhhhhh!” Timing at its finest.

Avoid at all Costs

1. “The Humpty Dance” by Digital Underground

Somehow, this terrible song also came with a terrible dance. Usually, one or the other blocks out the other, but the cosmos aligned for this one, giving the world a truly horrid combination of dancing and rhymes.

2. “Macarena” by Los Del Rio

I never got the appeal of this dance. You pretty much stay still except for in the arms, and even then it isn’t very fun. Los Del Rio’s only song ever worth noting comes off more like a game of Dance Dance Revolution - all about timing, not about fun.

A Few Other Songs To Include With No Reason

- “Watch my Feet” by Dude N Nem
- “Cupid Shuffle” by Cupid (so easy to do)
- “Mashed Potato Time” by Dee Dee Sharp
- “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles
- “Jump Around” by House of Pain

Indie Songs That Would Work But Will Never Be Played

- “Do the Standing Still” by The Dismemberment Plan – A song about not dancing at rock shows, and making fun of siad people for it. A bit meta, but still danceable for a song about not dancing though they should be dancing.

- “You! Me! Dancing!” by Los Campesino! – Cut off the minute long intro, and you got a killer guitar driven track about a kid who doesn’t know how to dance learning to let go and shake it. Beyond infectious, and one of my favorites.

- “Control” by Kid Sister – Instructions provided!

Great Videos to Show

- “D.A.N.C.E.” by Justice – A bit overplayed, but overplayed doesn’t matter at DM. Bring on the French!

- “Groove is in the Heart” by Dee Lite – Oldie but a goodie. Bootsy Collins makes the video. Being on drugs would help, but I don’t expect Food Committee to help with that.

- “Whip It” by Devo – Whip it good!

At 7 a.m. everyone was still dancing. They swayed like zombies in the glistening gray morning to the boundless thump of the bass. The night had been frigid; they danced to keep away the chill that hadn’t left the air and the cold in the dew that crept up their legs.

Glow sticks slowly faded as reflective tape caught a few weak sunbeams in the morning light of Sunday, September 16th. It was like a still from Rave to the Grave.

This was the situation on an expansive farm in rural Illinois on the final day of a three-day Earthdance celebration. The farm, in a town called Lowpoint near Peoria, Ill., was one of 340 locations in over 50 countries participating in Earthdance 2007. According to its Web site, Earthdance is the largest international music and dance event. The scale and location of celebrations vary from small private parties to huge gatherings in parks or stadiums.

The farm festival in Illinois booked over 30 electronic artists. Most of the artists performed some variety of trance, a type of music characterized by a breakneck tempo of 130 to 150 beats per minute. Trance music features crescendos and frequent breakdowns, time for dancers to pause, or freeze like statues before the music surges to a furious climax.

Phutureprimitive, the ambient trance project of disc jockey Rain, was the headliner at Earthdance in Lowpoint. Rain, an artist from Portland, Oregon, started DJing in 1992 and kept his sound private until the 2004 release of Sub Conscious on Waveform Records. Rain calls Phutureprimitive “subterranean electronic tribalism.”

Unlike other festivals, music isn’t the primary focus of Earthdance. The celebration, now in its eleventh year, aims to promote peace and support humanitarian causes. Participants worldwide join in a simultaneous peace prayer, and the Earthdance organization requires each local promoter to donate at least half the profits to a local charity. Over $1 million has been donated since Earthdance’s inception, not bad for a group of slovenly hippies.

But while peace and charity are well and good, I suspect that most of those who pitched a tent for the $30 nonstop festival came for the party.

The audience was a melange of hippies and ravers, with everything in between. White-haired ladies, college kids, locals, and a dreadlocked mother pulling her toddlers in a wagon covered with glow-in-the-dark tape were among those roaming the freshly mown grass. I met a guy who said he was an aeronautical engineer, and when I looked impressed, he looked sad and said he hated his job and just wanted to be a music producer.

As would be expected, the drugs were as diverse as the crowd, with everything from marijuana to 2C-B changing hands. A slightly drunk, bored girl told my brother she was friends with the owners of the farm and came to these things all the time. “We can tell who the dealers are, and we just turn them away, tell them to go right back home,” she said. My brother stifled a giggle.

Visual engineers Psymbolic coordinated light shows with lasers that flashed through the crowd and spotlights that wove undulating patterns onto the trees behind the main stage. As soon as it was dark, people began to twirl glow sticks and fire. When a young woman dressed all in black began to weave fire trails in the air, one particularly inebriated man gave her (and her burning chains) a sloppy hug.

My brother and I watched the fire dancers from the edge of a huge campfire. Next to us, some men with heavy Polish accents asked if we liked Beck. My brother told him that we did and that we saw him live at UIC Pavilion last year. He nodded, not quite understanding, and handed us two Becks beers. We sipped them, watching a baby with LED spinners attached to her jacket fall asleep in the campfire glow. It was a second helping of peace and charity.