8:25 a.m. — As the dancers, speakers, families, and children stream in and out of the main lounge, up above them hang two very special tributes to children both alive and gone. Skirting the room are pillow cases upon pillow cases, each designed in its own unique style to fit a child’s name scrawled across [...]

7:03 a.m. — Pancakes fly through the air in the River Room as Ted White flips a pancake — hot off the griddle — that flops perfectly onto the plate of a hungry dancer. As the sun begins to break through the black night, dancers are refueled by Chris Cakes, a family owned business that [...]

7:00 a.m. — The strobe lights never quit. A morale dance, just 10 minutes before, boosted the dancers’ mood. The DJ asked the Dance Marathon rookies and veterans to raise their hands. The veterans, he said, knew what was coming. “For all the rookies, this song tells us we’re halfway there,” the DJ yelled. Bon [...]

6:30 a.m. — One smiling girl is two. A laughing boy is 10. Their pictures, as well as other children’s, line the walls of a third floor room tucked away in the Iowa Memorial Union. Each of these children, no matter their age, succumbed to their battles with cancer. The Dancing in Our Hearts Room [...]

5:38 a.m. – Seth Hickman,13, a morale captain in training, goes in for the final victorious move to win in his early morning game of SORRY. The position of morale captain in training is a new addition to Dance Marathon this year and is a way to give teens the opportunity to participate. Most of [...]

5:03 a.m. — The pulsating music keeps the dancers on their feet. And three men make sure the music nevers stops: disc jockeys NYJ, Inzane, and Commando. Brad Muford, DJ Inzane, graduated from the University of Iowa in 2001. But he began to DJ at Dance Marathon in 1998. “It means a lot,” Muford said. [...]

Two girls are assigned to guard the door to the Iowa House Hotel during Dance Marathon.

But they are not dancers, they’re volunteers.