Dance Marathon Raises $35K To Combat Pediatric AIDS

And then there were 69.

That’s how many dancers were left standing at 8 a.m. at the end of a 12-hour dance marathon this weekend held to benefit a pediatric AIDS foundation.

Starting at 8 p.m. on Friday night, 225 undergraduates crowded the Quadrangle Recreational and Athletic Center (QRAC), having pledged to raise at least $100 for the cause.

Music blared over speakers, from Britney Spears to ’80s hits, and sounds of the marathon could be heard even outside the QRAC. Live bands performed, among them Fink Fank Funk, which includes several Harvard undergraduates. They took the stage at 11:30 p.m., around the time when visitors were allowed to look in on the dance floor.

At midnight, dancers sporting t-shirts and glow sticks were still going strong—surrounded by decorations, from AIDS ribbons to cloth banners with personal messages.

Surrounded by the strobe lights, one of the night’s biggest draws was Scott Wolf, a star on the Fox television show “Party of Five,” who dropped in on the party of 225 to show his support for their cause.

In a speech to the dancers, he related his experience with dance marathons and told them that one such event as an undergraduate at George Washington University had changed his life.

During that marathon, he said he first realized that “time and energy were not about me at all,” he said. “It was about others.”

The beneficiary of the weekend marathon, organized by HAR’D Corps, was the Elisabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which funds AIDS research in the United States and sends money for relief efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The event surpassed its original goal of raising $20,000 and ended the night with more than $35,000 benefitting the organization.

Wolf has been involved with the foundation since his college days at George Washington. He regularly makes appearances at events benefitting the cause and said he enjoys the marathons and finds them “inspiring.”

Though registered participants had to raise a minimum of $100 to participate, the top fund-raiser passed the $8,000 mark and a handful of others also raised thousands of dollars.

Participants included not only individuals but also group entries, from extracurricular organizations to House teams. Fuerza Latina, a Latin American student association, organized a dance troupe for the occasion. CityStep, the Black Men’s Forum and others also entered teams.

The six members of Team Adams House and the pair that made up the Black Men’s Forum team were the only groups whose entire entries lasted all 12 hours.

After the event, the Adams team staggered to Pforzheimer House for breakfast, said Helen L. Istvan ’03, one of the Team Adams members, who added that she felt “tired but ecstatic to go all night.”

At 6 a.m., with just two hours left, members of the Adams team noticed one of their teammates about to take a nap, and they collectively worked to keep her awake.

Their motivational moment was “a display of group effort,” Istvan said.

As the dancers formed a crowd in the spacious QRAC, a legion of volunteers kept them watered and snacked. One of the volunteers, Kerry M. Houlihan ’05, said she had been involved in a similar marathon in high school and was eager to help out during Harvard’s version of the event.

She helped keep the dance area clean and directed dancers towards water.

At 11 p.m., she called the environment “just a little crazy.”

But there was still a long way to go.