And the dancing did sometimes last for months. The king and queen of dance marathons were Callum DeVillier and Vonnie Kuchinski; the pair from Minnesota danced for 3,780 hours, five months straight, from December 1932 to June 1933. For winning the Somerville, Massachusetts dance marathon, they netted $1,000. This was the height of the craze, and no dancer was ever known to match their Saturday night everyday fever.
Then the dance marathons then began to die down. Displays of public dancing like this, which had thrived in the 1920s, were not as socially accepted as the ’30s rolled on. Besides the moral panic of dancing, there were legitimate health concerns as well. There were accounts of participants collapsing or even dying from exhaustion, and cities started banning the spectacle. The Somerville marathon that made them legends was held in this Boston suburb rather than the city itself because dance marathons were banned in the city proper.
The final nail in the marathon coffin was hammered once World War II broke out. Suddenly, everyone was busy with the war effort, and no one had either the time to dance for months or the need to watch others suffer for amusement. Dance marathons occasionally still happen as small fundraiser activities, but otherwise, they’re mostly a thing of the past.
Sadly, DeVillier and Kuchinski don’t even hold the Guinness World Record for longest dance marathon anymore. The rules of the record changed so that dancing had to be truly continuous, and because the marathon win involved 15-minute breaks, their victory was erased. As of this writing, the current record, set in 2018, clocked in at 126 hours. So one hour less than it took for that dude trapped by the boulder to decide to cut his arm off.
Top Image: Library Of Congress
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Dance Marathons Could Last For Months During The Great Depression
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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