Dance-a-Thon for Various Causes Set for Saturday

Inspired by a touching Alicia Keys song, the dancers of Happy Feet Dance School wanted to do one more act that would bring them together as a group considering many are graduating high school and going off to different paths of life next year.

Many of the girls have been dancing together for more than ten years, starting when they were just 5 or 6, growing close over time and going through a lot together.

“The song, if you listen to the lyrics it talks about ‘we are here, we are here for each other, to love one another, to get through all the bad times,’” Happy Feet Dance School instructor and organizer Nina Tocantins said. “It then brought me to doing something with a fundraiser and thinking about all those things and what they can do to help out.”

With hoping to help others and doing it as one group, Happy Feet Dance School is holding its first dance-a-thon this Saturday starting at 5 p.m. and lasting until 11 p.m. at Happy Feet Dance School along Route 52. With each girl choosing a charity of their choice, they will be dancing for six straight hours in order to raise money and awareness for that specific cause or foundation.

ÊOne girl picked a foundation that combats domestic violence, while another girl chose an organization that fights cancer because her mother has suffered from it. Each selection is usually a personal one.

“Some of them because of people that they know, they picked a family member or someone that they’re close to,” Tocantins said. “And some of them, they felt very strongly about.”

Tocantins has been teaching this group of girls for about six years, and described them as a really good group of girls, “which is why I kind of picked them as the group to do this.”

While the actual dancers must dance for six hours straight (with little breaks in between) other participants can dance for as much or as little as they want. Many of the parents of the students got involved by going to their places of work looking for sponsorships. Tocantins secured BMW in Mount Kisco in Westchester as a sponsor and Insite Engineering in Carmel.