March 11, 2012

By Ciera Velarde

More than 550 dancers participated in MU’s fifth annual Dance Marathon on Saturday in the MU Student Recreation Complex.

For 12 consecutive hours, the participants danced to raise funds for MU Children’s Hospital.

“All of the proceeds we raise go to the hospital to help fund what they need most,” steering committee member Katie Jernigan said. “Dance Marathon is really a way to lend a helping hand to the kids and their families.”

MU Dance Marathon raised $76,724.24 through sponsorships, fundraising opportunities and canning downtown. Although the actual event is only one day, planning and fundraising for the event started in August.

“As soon (as) we came back to school, we started planning how we were going to spread the word about Dance Marathon,” Jernigan said. “We came up with FTK Week and FTK Day as our largest fundraiser.”

Freshman Amanda Labrot participated in Dance Marathon for the first time with a team comprised of girls from the Alpha Chi Omega sorority.

“I’ve always wanted to do a dance marathon because of an episode of Gilmore Girls and more seriously, because of my brother,” Labrot said. “He was severely handicapped and died when I was three. He spent many days and hours in the hospital throughout his life, and I wanted to make hospital stays more bearable for children and families in central Missouri.”

Before Dance Marathon, the Steering Committee organized events to meet and get to know families from the Children’s Hospital.

“One of my favorite activities we have done is the Family Picnic,” Jernigan said. “We invited all of the families to come out and enjoy sandwiches and fun activities so we could put a face to the name of who we were doing this for.”

Families also came to speak to the dancers throughout the marathon and interact with everyone at the event.

Chelsea Fricker, an Apple campus representative who was working at the event, said she heard many stories from families about how Apple technology has helped their children with cancer.

“There was one family who came up and wanted to look through the apps on my iPad because a human resources center had donated an iPad to their son who is battling cancer and has developed a speech impediment,” Fricker said. “Seeing how Apple can help improve the daily lives of people who are already battling through so much was really an incredible experience for me.”

Throughout the event, it was the moralers’ job to keep up the energy and encourage the dancers to keep going. Moralers are picked in October and go through training to learn how to recruit dancers, spread the word about Dance Marathon and learn the morale dance that they performed during the marathon.

“Seeing all of our hard work since October come together was so inspiring,” moraler and Maneater staff writer Hanna Jacunski said. “We got to dance like crazy with all the other moralers. They’ve really become a family to me.”

After 12 hours of non-stop dancing, all participants went home with a Dance Marathon T-shirt with bright neon letters reading, “Party with a purpose.”

“The Steering Committee does a lot to make the hours pass faster with guest performances, themed hours and a choreographed group dance,” Labrot said. “The whole event was so much fun, and I definitely want to participate again next year.”