By Elianna Novitch  | [email protected]

A year full of preparation and motivation has led to today for the families and members of Dance Marathon. Its 24-hour Big Event is just a few hours away.

Along with the amazing traditions and activities that Dance Marathon has picked up over the years, new activities and features have been added this year as the organization progresses.

“I’ve really taken it upon myself to make this year a fun and meaningful experience for everyone involved,” said Event Committee director Mason Edwards. “I want dancers to come to the event and enjoy themselves and for them to understand the kind of impact every single person there is making. In addition to that, we want to make sure that all 24 hours, people are entertained.

“It’s a long time that they’re committing themselves to, pretty much an entire weekend of standing on their feet and being active.”

Edwards, along with the rest of the Event Committee, has worked for a year to implement new activities for the Big Event.

“We really wanted to build a more interactive event for the dancers because making it through the 24 hours can be difficult,” said entertainment head Maddy Woodfine.

Some of the new additions include laser tag, sumo wrestling, and a texture walk.

“We are going to utilize the Hawkeye Room and use it for laser tag, which should be a really fun, new experience,” Woodfine said. “We wanted to provide dancers with another space to go if they don’t feel like being in the big ballroom.”

Edwards said one new feature he especially looks forward to seeing the dancers use is the texture walk.

“A texture walk is basically a tool that dancers can use to alleviate the pain in their feet by walking over different kinds of textures that will be soothing to their feet,” Edwards said. “We’re hoping dancers utilize that to the best of their abilities to make sure their feet don’t hurting as much as possible.”

Besides having such activities as karaoke, laser tag, and sumo wrestling, Dance Marathon will provide dancers with activity rooms. The Event Committee has made new additions to the rooms for Dance Marathon 23.

“We have five activity rooms that run during the night hours around 1 a.m. to 7 a.m., right when people are beginning to hit a wall,” Edwards said. “We have a couple new additions to those rooms this year, including a glow in the dark room with black lights and a carnival room where you can come and win small prizes. Those rooms are used to help people get out of their heads and ignore that their feet are hurting.”

Campus-relations head Hanna Beary said she is ready for dancers to take advantage of all that the Big Event has to offer.

“We have a lot of new things coming to the IMU that we’ve never tried to do before,” she said.

Dance Marathon has been around for more than 22 years and changed a lot since its beginnings. However, the reason the organization is so committed to what the members do has not.

“Every year, more and more kids are diagnosed with cancer, and so the program has to get that much larger every year. All we do is for the kids, and we’ve got to grow with them,” Beary said.

Dance Marathon leaders are  always looking for ways to improve.

“We are always looking to improve not only the event but our entire organization year-round,” Edwards said. “The sole purpose is to make sure that we are doing as much as we can for the families, and I think that’s why you’ve seen such incredible growth by our organization throughout the years, because we are always committed, and we’re not just OK with how things are. We always want to look to improve stuff.”