Hopkins hosted its first Dance Marathon on Friday, April 8th from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. in the Ralph S. O’Connor Rec Center.
Dance Marathon was an all-night dance party that challenged the participants to stand on their feet all night long to raise money for The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, which is a local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital.
Approximately 300 participants were able to raise nearly $4,000. “We were very pleased with the turnout for the first year — we think it’s a good foundation and a good starting point for this event to take off in years to come,” Vice President of Dance Marathon sophomore Amanda Leininger wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Other schools have had extremely successful Dance Marathons throughout the years.
“This is great considering that we started out with nothing and thus had to fund the entire event as well as raise money,” executive Dance Marathon board member junior Maggie McCarthy, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Leininger agreed that the Dance Marathon was successful. “Penn State started their Dance Marathon in 1973 with 39 dance couples and they raised approximately $2,000. This year they raised over $9.5 million so that’s really encouraging,” Leininger wrote.
The marathon was advertised through Facebook, stating on the website that there would be food, contests, giveaways, raffles, dancing and T-shirts. Participants won various prizes including shutter shades, glowsticks, sillybandz, bubble necklaces and mardi gras beads.
The largest prize raffled off was a two-day pass to Six Flags of America. Student dance groups also performed as entertainment. There were morale leaders to keep people motivated and dancing, and featuring DJs sophomore Alec Fisher, graduate student Junaid Faruq and Jason Heiserman.
“There was on-the-hour choreographed dance by the entire e-board of DM,” Fundraising Chair of the executive Dance Marathon board junior Karen Grethlein wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
There were two different ways to raise money for Dance Marathon. At other universities, participants are required to raise a certain amount of money. Instead, Hopkins enacted a letter writing campaign.
“The main way we raised money was throughout a letter writing campaign in which we asked event attendees and members of the executive board to write letters to friends and family asking for donations on behalf of Dance Marathon and the JH Children’s Center,” McCarthy wrote. “The letter writing campaign was a crucial aspect of DM, as it both raised awareness of the event itself and encouraged donation to our beneficiary — the Johns Hopkins Children Center,” wrote Grethlein.
Each participant was encouraged to bring at least five addresses and five stamps to the letter writing campaign in mid-March to send out to their friends and family to ask for donations for staying on their feet for eight hours.
Dance Marathon provided the support letters, so all participants needed to do was personalize and send them out. If participants did not write letters, there was a seven dollar charge to enter Dance Marathon. Dance Marathon tried to encourage people to write letters rather than pay for themselves, but both methods were successful.
Months of planning went into making Dance Marathon the success that it was. “We basically put our heart and soul into making this event happen,” Leininger wrote.
President junior Ariel Meranus and Leininger, along with a 22-person executive board, were responsible for planning Dance Marathon and had been working on organizing the event since September.
“Planning-wise there was a lot of effort, as would be expected, because it was Dance Marathon’s first year at [Hopkins]. We split up the tasks into different committees (i.e. finance and event planning), and each person had a board position,” Grethlein wrote.
Each committee had certain responsibilities. For example, Grethlein was on the fundraising committee and planned two fundraisers at Maxie’s. “My committee was responsible for recruiting ‘morale leaders’ whose job it was to keep everyone excited and on their feet throughout the night, as well as choreograph and teach the Dance Marathon line dance,” McCarthy said.
The executive board researched other universities’ successful Dance Marathons, and brainstormed at their weekly meetings ways to improve and make the event as great as possible. “We selected DJs and an MC, selected Morale Leaders for the event, choreographed a Morale Dance, booked a venue, figured out logistical details of the event (AV, sound, etc.), orchestrated food donations/discounts from Subway, Chipotle, Krispy Kreme, Domino’s and Papa John’s and marketed the event,” Leininger wrote.
Marketing and public support was an important aspect in the event planning. “We marketed the event through Facebook, mural boards, a promo video, flash ads, flyers, breezeway signs and even distributed promotional t-shirts,” Leininger wrote.
This was the first Dance Marathon at Hopkins, but the executive board plans to make it an annual event. In fact, they have already started thinking about improvements for next year. “As this was our first year, it was definitely a learning experience. Mistakes were definitely made, but we learned from all of them,” Leininger wrote.
She explained how well the executive board worked together, even under stress, and is very happy with what they accomplished.
“Looking back, having the event start a little later would have been a good idea, and we would have encouraged more people to come — that’s one of our goals for next year,” Leininger wrote.
However, many people ended up leaving around 1:30 or 2:00 a.m. “Next year, we’ll try to incentivize people to remain there for the whole night,” McCarthy wrote.
The feedback from participants seems to be all positive. “I liked Dance Marathon because, one, I like to dance and, two, I like helping people, so this was the perfect event for me. There were many games to keep us motivated. My favorite being ‘The Floor is Lava!’ where if you stop moving, you lose,” freshman Katia Charow said.
Freshman Victor Allard also had a good time at the event. “I danced for almost five hours; it was exhausting, but worth it,” Allard said.
The executive board members were pleased as well. “Dance Marathon was an amazing start to what I hope becomes a great tradition on the JHU campus,” Grethlein wrote.
“Overall, it went really well, especially for our first year, and we only hope that DM will gain more presence on campus to make it an event that everyone really looks forward to,” McCarthy wrote.
