MARATHON DANCE CRAZE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 132, 5 June 1923, Page 4

MARATHON DANCE CRAZE.

? j AMERICANS GO MAD. t COMPETITOR DROPS DEAD. ' (From Our Special Correspondent.) • SAN FRANCISCO, April 24. s The dancing mania that swept all ■ over Europe in the Middle Ages, and ' that was revived about ten years ago , when American ragtime gave it a fresh ; start, has taken an entirely new turn ias an affliction in civilised countries. In j the Middle Ages it was primarily a i religious mania, and in recent times it ' I has been mainly a mania for pleasure, > but as seen in the latest development in ■ the United States it is regarded as the ' sheer insanity of shallow-brained flap- ' pers and parlour Sheiks intent upon - I establishing endurance records. 1 Of course, neither religion nor plea- ■ sure lias anything to do with the pre--1 ! sent self-inflicted torture of dancing for 1 tlavs and days without a stop. At first '- '■ it "was thought marvellous when some- ' body danced the clock around, but from twenty-four hours the record was ■ nuicklv boosted to forty-eight, then the i "best" stood at sixty-five hours and r ' thirty-eight minutes for a man, and i sixty-five hours and fifty-three minutes ' I for a woman, the Texan woman having \ ! outdistanced the man in endurance. ' j The craze increased with remarkable rapidity in America until all existing ' ' non-stop records were surpassed by Miss 1 J Margaret Khretts and Tom F. Jackson ' of Cuthbert. Georgia, who placed the ' Southern States in the Marathon Dance 1i in the limelight with a hundred hours • of continuous stepping. ! Many of the contestants for the ' world's record Marathon dancing were so overpowered by the extraordinary exertion that they were carried to hospitals and remained unconscious for many hours ere they recovered. Some of the dancers in various parts of America : practically wrecked their physique by the dancing craze, according to examinations made by medical men after these brainless dancers had been carried to hospital. DAXCE OF DEATH. Some of the contestants, in their period of recovery in the hospitals, were ! noticed to indulge, in ravings, having 'gone mad through the frenzy of tne whirling dervish endurance test, but m New York the inevitable occurred when 'Homer Morchouse, aged 27 years, having I completed eighty-seven hours of continuous dancing, dropped dead on the way to his seat, and was soon in the hands of the undertaker. This gave the ' deceased a second " record," as being the first to achieve the natural result of his folly. It was not long before this record was eclipsed by Arthur Howard Klein, of Cleveland, who, wearing a mask, started dancing on a Sunday afternoon, at 2 o'clock, and established a new world's record of SS hours IS minutes. Klein was a trained athlete of 26 years of age, and he set out to capture the championship by systematic dieting and exercise as a means of supporting his wife and baby, according to his friends. In Washington, the marathon dance entrants numbered 37, and many hours passed pro the first couple dropped out of the contest. At this exhibition, doctors, nurses, dieticians and chiropodists sat at the side lines. Scientific feeding prevailed, 350 food calories an hour being given the dancers. Texas was badly affected by the marathon dancing mania, and when the re- ! cords were in the sixty-hour stage Misn Magdalene Williams held the world's endurance record for men and women at 1 65 hours 53 minutes, elapsed time. Txmis Kessler was then the men's longdistance champion, with 65 hours 3S minutes of elapsed time, while seventeenj year-old C.oldie Hughes, who had to he , J carried off the floor by main force after I dancing for 53 straight hours, held, with I V. V. Vestal, the couple long-distance :, belt, with 44 hours 45 minutes to their credit. SIDESTEP LAW. Eight marathon dancers stepped out of the reach of the law when they foxtrotted their way from New York to New Jersey to escape a police ruling that might have prohibited any further attempts on their part to set a new record for non-stop dancing. The live youths and three girls, along with two extra girls, were filling in as partners for the men, and they danced their way out of an Upper Broadway ballroom into waiti ing motor buses, where they kept on i fox-trotting while the vehicles trundled : to the Fort Lee ferry across the Hudson River. They danced while it-chugged its way to Fort Lee, New Jersey, then danced back into a bus and danced all the way to a Fort Lee dance hall. Later , in the day the dancers were invited by - New Jersey police to leave the State, and toddled back into their moving van, ■ bound for "somewhere in Harlem." Two ] days later Vera Sheppard danced in three ■ j States, two public dance halls, one private parlour, four moving vans and a I ferry boat to set a new non-stop record Of sixty-nine hours flat, and doctors deI elared that she would suffer no ill effects from her achievement. J Starting in New York city at 7.10 J o'clock on the Saturday night, Vera was I led off the dance door at East Port I Chester in Connecticut, on the following ■ Tuesday afternoon. Stopped by the police in New York, Miss Sheppard i moved on to New Jersey, where the men jin blue ordered her to move on further. I Sagging, half numb in her partner's arms, but still protesting that she wanted to dance 100 hours, Vera was draped off the dancing floor. Her whole body was inert, except for the automatic shutfle of tired swolleu feet. Glazed eyes that did not comprehend fit first were . turned toward the Chief of Police when he touched her on the shoulder. I Ted Gill, her partner, ran shrieking through the hall that the interference was v plot to interfere with the record \\ lid-eyed ho demanded to be allowed to continue. Then he collapsed. DANCERS INSANE. i In Washington, Miss Florence Gentry aged If), collapsed after she had danced continuously for 48 hours, and a man and woman also were carried to a neigh- I bouringr hospital in extremis. They I were declared to be insane from the , extraordinary exertion. I