6-Hour Dance-a-thon

Whoa guys I was on TV! I didn't see it live (as my television is only hooked up for games and movies, not actual TV), but here it is on the internets! I'm the one in the pink skirt. Sadly they did not catch a very exciting part of the dance-a-thon, but what can you do.

Last week was crazy busy! Saturday was the Dance-a-thon to raise money for the Winooski Dollars for Scholars. The week previous went thus: Monday night I went out and bought some super-comfy sneakers for the event, Tuesday and Wednesday nights were spent making matching shirts (my friend Shannon was the other half of our two-woman team), Thursday night we went to see the Saint Michael's College production of Dead Man Walking, and Friday night we went to a homeschool group's brilliant production of Much Ado About Nothing, starring as Hero a lovely bright young lady whom I'm helping in her endeavor to write a novel. (If and when her novel becomes available for purchase, I will promote it on here, so watch for that!)

*Deep breaths* and then it was Saturday, and time for the Dance-a-thon, which was 2-8pm. My friend Shannon and I raised $170 (a big THANK YOU to our coworkers who donated!), which will all go toward scholarships for local kids. We made cool shirts:

Left to right: me, Shannon.

If you can't tell, in the middle of our design that's the knight logo for Saint Michael's College, of which we're both alumnae. Some lady asked us the significance of the fish. :-/ It's not a fish. It's a fancy helm. We called ourselves the "Knight Dancers" and made a coat of arms with the knight in the middle, surrounded by stars and dancing feet.

We were the only ones to really bother with costumes at all (other than the Seven Days ladies who all wore official Seven Days shirts), so we won the "best costume" prize! Yay! It was a gift certificate to one of our favorite local restaurants, Sneaker's Bistro. 

I think we might have won the endurance prize too, since we were there the whole time, dancing the whole 6 hours... but there weren't very many people there and I think they wanted to spread out the prizes. No complaints! I'm set with Sneakers. 

Food table off to the right--very tasty snacks!

It was loads of fun! They did several group dances, one of which I requested: the Cotton Eyed Joe. Shannon and I are pro at that. (You may have noticed my preview hint off to the right through Twitter via ThisIsMyJam.) They also did the Electric Slide and the YMCA.

YMCA! Photo credit to Elizabeth Stillwell

There were fewer than 10 people there for most of the 6 hours, but people filtered in and out. They switched DJs/bands about every hour. There were maybe 30 people near the end when they had local Winooski band A2VT perform, which was cool. Everyone was up at the front just dancing right in front of the band:

The band is on the right, and a larger crowd of dancers is off camera to the left!

A2VT isn't the type of music I'd normally pick up off a shelf, since it's rap-speckled hip-hop. I'm just not that into it. But I must say, it was pretty awesome to have all these local Winooski people dancing to a Winooski-based band to this song about Winooski:

By the end of the night, we were pretty exhausted. 

This is after it ended, when we were allowed to stop dancing!

And Shannon wasn't feeling well even before the dance-a-thon, so all that activity -- even though we paced ourselves -- kinda made it worse. And then I caught whatever she had a couple days later. Ugh. But everything was worth it, and the dance-a-thon hit its overall goal of clearing $1,000 total. Huzzah! 

This was the first year they've done this, and it will continue every year. Next year, I'll make sure to tell more people about it! If you're in the area... come join us! Have you ever done a dance-a-thon? What's the craziest thing you've done for a cause?