Friday, November 22, 2013

Of Red Bull and Morale Dances

     At 7 PM on Friday, November 15th, a new UNC Charlotte tradition started. Charlotte held it's first Dance Marathon in support of the Children's Miracle Network, and dancing occurred for TWELVE STRAIGHT HOURS! Wow, was that tiring. I had considered doing a live blog of the event, but it's just as well that I didn't. What would have been typed would have looked like: "Oh my goodness I'm up now for 8 hours and I've had SOOOOOOOOOOOO much caffeine! Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!"

     To spare you all that torture, I figured it would be much wiser to go ahead and talk about some of the finer points of Dance Mine, after the event. Just now, as I was sitting here typing this, I got told to include "jazzercise", some very inventive form of torture designed solely to suck the energy out of the audience. It included some really intensive dancing and flinging of arms. I kid about the torture, it was actually quite fun. The whole night was quite fun, in reflection. Not only did we jazzercise, we performed the most upbeat salsa dancing I have ever been part of, raved, drank enough caffeine to make the Energizer bunny look lethargic in comparison, and wobbled the night away. We did this cool morale dance which involved pirates, superheroes, and the Lion King. And, of course, there was a lot of food. Enough that I couldn't complain about being hungry, even with my prodigious hunger. All in all, it was a pretty killer party.

     But let's not forget what this stood for, why we stood for (at least) twelve hours, and all that came before this.



     This Dance Marathon was in support of Children's Miracle Network, as I said before. But CMN is a very large entity, and most people don't know about what it is. To give you some reference, Levine Children's Hospital is a part of CMN. For those of you who don't know what Levine Children's Hospital is about, it gives specialized care to children with life-altering - and usually life threatening - issues. It's also where every dime of the $35,066.25 (WOW!) raised through Dance Mine went. Levine Children's is a place that has touched my family personally, and I was so grateful to be part of an effort to give back to the hospital that saved my baby cousin's life. 

    Speaking of that effort, I was blown away this year by the concerted work I saw from my fellow Niners. When I got here this year, I had expected the entire effort to be Levine Scholars only. Last I checked though, there are only 59 of us. There were over 600 people that contributed to the event in some way, shape or form. That means that over 540 people just volunteered their time and money to this event, just because it was a good cause. To them, and to my fellow Levines, I want to say thank you, so much. It wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of all those in the event, from setting up prior to the event (Operations, you guys were incredible), or tabling in front of the Union, to getting corporate sponsorship (I was a big fan of the Red Bull), and - most importantly - just fundraising and getting the word out. You guys are the best!

   And for those of you who want to take a look, we have a video of the night. I highly recommend you take a look at it! Thanks for reading this, and have a great day!