Taylor Dietrich knew that what she was asking of the crowd before her was no small feat. Standing for 24 hours is a challenge. And for some, dancing for that long seemed out of the question.
“What we’re asking you to do we know is not easy,” she said at noon on March 1, 2014, the day of the main event. But as the overall director of USC Dance Marathon, Dietrich said she had all the faith in the world in them.
By noon the next day, hundreds of dancers had shifted their focus from the aches in their shins to the reason they had stayed on their feet for so long: the kids.
In the end, the dancing paid off. Literally.
Overall, the 2014 USCDM raised $318,649 in donations, a 30 percent increase from the previous year’s total.
USCDM Public Relations Director Leslie Knight said more than 1,000 students had participated between those who had registered and those who attended the rave.
“We’re blown away by the dancers,” said Katelyn Daley, head morale captain. “We could not be more proud.”
Keldon Hemingway, an 11-year-old staple of Dance Marathon, took the stage with his parents, who thanked the crowd profusely for their passion and effort. Keldon was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was 6-years-old but, five years later, he danced around the stage as though he had never been sick.
“What you’re doing today is real,” said Keldon’s mom, Sheila Hemingway. “It’s for real people. It’s for real children.”
The crowd packed themselves against the stage with just under an hour left until the event’s end, readying themselves to see the grand fundraising total. Dancers, morale captains and executive board members pushed together in an attempt to get everyone as close as possible to the cards that bore the donation total.
“I’m hoping the number is a lot bigger than last year,” said Lindsay Webb, morale captain and second-year public relations student, while she waited for the reveal. “After all the work we did and everything that happened this year, I think it should be a really big number.”
And that’s exactly what they got.
Once the number cards were flipped, the music was turned back up, and the dancers readied themselves to perform the 13-minute line dance they had learned over the last 24 hours.
Minutes before noon on Sunday, the dancers made a circle around the edge of the gym, with the USCDM team in the middle. Together, the groups formed the annual “Circle of Hope” as part of the closing ceremonies, and morale captains ran to each dancer to give them a high five and a thank you.
After the clock struck noon once again, dancers shuffled out of the gym to head home, and several morale captains fell to the floor in exhaustion.
But for second-year English student Sarah Johnson, the music stopping and the gym clearing out wasn’t just about sitting down and celebrating. It was a time to reflect on the last 24 hours and plan for the next.
“That total means everything,” Johnson said. “I want to stay another 24 hours.”
Read the full version of this story, published in 2014.