The Sandford Fleming engineering building looked like business as usual from the outside this weekend. But inside, a high-powered, 24-hour dance-a-thon was raging.

The Dance Marathon was put on Friday and Saturday by engineering students to raise money for the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation for cancer research.

“Well, the most upfront thing we are trying to do is raise money for cancer,” said organizer and director Jose Estrada. “But the one thing we are trying to do on top of that is to unite the University of Toronto under one cause in one event. Now everything is really sectionalized-there’s engineers, doctors, the artsies. We want people to unite and be proud to be at U of T, not only in engineering or medicine.”

From 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., students danced without knowing the time or sitting down. They took a walk during the day to stretch their limbs and collect more pledges.

“I’m really into dancing,” said dancer Imelda Nurwisah, “it was intriguing.” For participant Denny Lam, “it seemed like a good way to get involved and it was for a good cause.”

After about twenty hours the dancers felt exhausted, but kept going.

“It’s one thing to do like a two-kilometre run for a good cause, but a 24-hour marathon? That’s unheard of. My friend said that was hardcore,” said Nurwisah.

Organized by SAC and the U of T Engineering Skule, the inaugural event featured 20 dancers and managed to raise over $1,000.

“The SAC Dance Marathon is a club that takes the whole year. They have a big website, put up posters, make people aware of what is culminating in today’s events. For 24 hours, we’re dancing for cancer,” said Melanie Elliot, another group organizer. “We even have a T-dance we created for the event, and we do it every hour on the hour.”

The ‘T-dance’ was specially designed to wake the dancers up.

The Dance Marathon is Estrada’s pet project, who borrowed the idea from Penn State University.

“It’s my baby right now. It’s been around for 40 years at Penn State and they raised $4.2 million in 48 hours,” said Estrada. “U of T could use something to unite the school and get its people passionate.

“We’re looking for people for Dance Marathon 2007,” he added. “It’ll be even better than this year.”