Talk:Dance marathon

Comment
Sjrandall (talk) 11:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC) There must be more Dance Marathon's out there? I added the University of Iowa, if there are more they probably could be organized better with individual entries.

This is absolutely absurd. There used to be a significant page on charity dance marathons which are nothing like the old dance marathons of the 20's and 30's. The WikiPedia page contained a complete list of many of the over 100 charity dance marathons across the country along with their fundraising totals and beneficiaries. The WikiDance group needs to let go of the charity dance marathons. This is hurting charities across the country as it is giving the misperception that the fundraiser is about dance and couples standing on their feet doing the swing and tango throughout the night rather than the year long-efforts that are charity dance marathons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.155.242.219 (talk) 14:11, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I've removed the discussion from the main article. If you want, you can go back through revisions of the article, find the missing info, and copy it into the latest version, hope this helps. Mongoletsi (talk) 12:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Why has the WikiDance group limited the amount of information on dance marathons? Wesley7487 (talk) 18:56, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

ev5unleash: So majority of this article has been altered because of this WikiDance crap? —Preceding undated comment added 03:49, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Not enough on 20s / 30s cultural phenomenen
Article has promotion of the relatively insignificant "charity dance marathons" which nobody wants to read about. There is 1 paragraph about the depression era dance marathons and their scale. 86.139.40.176 (talk) 06:13, 7 September 2014 (UTC)


 * VERY good point. Safe, short, happy student dance marathons and charity events aren't the history we come here for. --  Also, reading the first para. one gets the impression that dance marathons in the 20's and 30's were fun, fun, fun.  Quite the opposite was true, and eventually these events were socially discouraged, if not outright banned, for being abusive and dangerous.  The novel mentioned, and the film based on it, document this.  Btw, this article states that They Shoot Horses, Don't They? "popularized" the dance marathon in later years.  I think that is unlikely given its brutally honest and gut wrenching appraisal.  My guess is that whoever wrote that bit never read the book or saw the movie.  50.54.231.229 (talk) 15:32, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree, I think that there needs to be more insight onto the brutality of dance marathons during the Depression era. While it mentioned that contestants would dance nonstop in exchange for meals, I think it undermines the physical toll dance marathons had on the dancers. Wesley7487 (talk) 19:07, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Yep. There is confusion, both here and at the article on walkathon, between the competitive events that became popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and the charity fundraising events that take place today.  The section, or article, on the phenomenon of the 1920s/30s needs to be expanded.  I assume that this book is probably a good source, and here is an article that covers the ground.   In addition, the dance events held for charity should be placed in a separate article.  So, perhaps, this should become a disambiguation page, and there should be two articles - Dance marathon (competition) and Dance marathon (fundraiser).     Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:33, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 6 one external links on Dance marathon. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140731053926/http://dancemarathon.com/AboutUs to http://dancemarathon.com/AboutUs
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111009084917/http://www.twitvid.com/BO6ZY to http://www.twitvid.com/BO6ZY
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110823114038/http://nudm.org/2011/03/10/northwestern-university-dance-marathon-breaks-a-million-for-the-childrens-heart-foundation/ to http://nudm.org/2011/03/10/northwestern-university-dance-marathon-breaks-a-million-for-the-childrens-heart-foundation/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120217165004/http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2009/02/02/news/doc4986ed3f051db739928527.txt to http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2009/02/02/news/doc4986ed3f051db739928527.txt
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110726001350/http://www.dmum.org/about.html to http://www.dmum.org/about.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160531192347/http://hopeforthekids.com/ to http://www.hopeforthekids.com/

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Please explain…
… the latter part of this sentence:

‘marathons faded in the public's enthusiasm in the late 1930s due to increased municipal ordinances and the decreased number of towns where the seamier side of the promotions were unknown.’

I’ve read it several times and still don’t understand, poor grammar aside. 2001:8003:303A:9D00:8069:8018:F8C9:3460 (talk) 08:38, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Good point, I read the source for that para and it took some work to figure it out. Basically, there were a lot of dishonest promoters, and towns that had hosted dance marathons previously had often gotten burnt when they skipped town without paying bills, so the promoters needed towns that had never had a dance marathon. Anyway, I rewrote that section. Schazjmd   (talk)  17:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Why do you think wikidance removed the “dance marathon for charity” WIKEPEDIA page? - Probably because it is a subcategory of dance marathons and isn’t necessary to create a separate page for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strawberry2302 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Dark history behind dance marathons - lead section
All of the content that is mentioned in the article should be briefly mentioned/ touched upon in the lead section. If it is mentioned that the dance marathons were used for charity, I think it is also important to mention how straining and tiring the marathons were, especially in the context of poverty in the 1920s and 30s (origins section). Jenlynn1000 (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I think it is necessary to mention the dark history of the dance marathons during the depression era on the lead section because it provides the necessary context for other sections. I think that without mentioning the dark history, it becomes harder to contextualize why there was strong opposition towards the dance marathons. Wesley7487 (talk) 14:49, 13 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I think that it’s important to acknowledge history’s past as a whole, not excluding certain aspects just because they are difficult to talk about.

Given that the depression era is when dance marathons started, I think that it is appropriate to discuss the origin, no matter if the true origin effects the overall tone of the article. Better to be truthful than misleading. Acasascolucarelli3 (talk) 14:49, 13 December 2022 (UTC)