Students clad in neon crop-tops and sparkly spandex pants strutted to popular house music and hip-hop tunes for this year’s second annual bRAVE dance-a-thon Feb. 23.
The event, which brought in over $21,000 and hosted over 800 participants, marked the most successful fundraiser in school history. All proceeds went to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as part of LLS fundraising month. Doors opened at 6 p.m., and most students stayed the entire time, until 1 a.m.
Students partied in the big gym and took intermittent recovery breaks in the small gym. The SGA brought boxes of food out to the lobby to keep participants energized. Nando’s Peri Peri, Bethesda Bagels and Georgetown Cupcake contributed, among other sponsors.
All sponsorships were free, bRAVE committee head Andrea McDonald said. Other sponsors simply donated money, which helped pay for the DJ. B-CC student Alex Tatem worked the lighting.
Over two years, the event has transformed from a fundraiser to a school-wide celebration. SGA president Jacob Rosenblum attributed the change to the timeliness of the rave theme. Last year, Rosenblum modeled the idea after Northwestern’s annual 32-hour dance marathon, he said.
“People are into the house music phenomenon, and our in-your-face advertising made the event a sort of requirement,” he said. “By putting it on Facebook and Twitter, we made the night bring people together.”
The seven-hour marathon was interspersed with performances from the Break Dancing Club, Poms and Drumline. Students watched enthusiastically and even climbed up on top of friends’ shoulders to see.
The surplus of students made the event extremely crowded, junior Alex Kang said. Over 400 of the participants paid at the door, but the pre-order response predicted the event would only accommodate 600. At points when food arrived, hundreds of people swarmed the lobby and hallway, but that didn’t stop Kang from having fun.
“I was burning on the dance floor, and there was a stampede for food, but I loved meeting the new people and dancing,” he said.
At 12:59 a.m., after seven hours of dancing, Rosenblum stood up onto the DJ platform in front of all 800 participants to announce the last minute of bRAVE.
“It’s amazing that we’ve got this far,” he said to the crowd. “Thank you all for everything you’ve done — your legs must be killing you.”
