A dance marathon is an event in which people stay on their feet for a given length of time. It started as a popular fad in the 1920s and 1930s, when organized dance endurance contests attracted people to compete to achieve fame or win monetary prizes. A 1969 film about the fad, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, based on the 1935 book of the same name, written by Horace McCoy who was a bouncer at several such marathons, popularised the idea, and prompted students at Pennsylvania State University and Northwestern University to create charity dance marathons.
Read more about Dance Marathon: 1920s and 1930s, Charity Dance Marathons
Famous quotes containing the words dance and/or marathon:
“with my bare finger and my funny feet,
doing the undoing dance ...”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)