At a time when many churches still considered dancing sinful, "walkathon" was a less threatening term.
They occupied a slightly disrespectable niche in society, and many towns banned them, finding them disruptive, disturbing, and even repugnant.ĭance marathons were known as "bunion derbies," and "corn and callus carnivals." Promoters called them "walkathons." Social dancing had only recently acquired a veneer of respectability through the efforts of wholesome married dance teams like Vernon and Irene Castle. Dance marathons were held in Spokane, Seattle, Yakima, Wenatchee, Bellingham, and elsewhere. A 25-cent admission price entitled audience members to watch as long as they pleased.
NONSTOP DANCER CRACKED
In these dance endurance contests, a mix of local hopefuls and seasoned professional marathoners danced, walked, shuffled, sprinted, and sometimes cracked under the pressure and exhaustion of round-the-clock motion. Dance marathons persisted throughout the 1930s as partially staged performance events, mirroring the marathon of desperation Americans endured during the Great Depression. Dance marathons originated as part of an early-1920s, giddy, jazz-age fad for human endurance competitions such as flagpole sitting and six-day bicycle races. Dance Marathons (also called Walkathons), an American phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, were human endurance contests in which couples danced almost non-stop for hundreds of hours (as long as a month or two), competing for prize money.