Dance Marathon surprised students and passers-by on Central Campus at noon Friday at noon with a flash mob-type performance in front of the Campanile.

With music provided by carillonneur Tin-Shi Tam in the campanile, members of Dance Marathon gathered together to perform a choreographed dance to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

The event took place Friday to mark the 99-day countdown from the main Dance Marathon event Jan. 22, where the organization helps raise money for children with life-threatening illnesses.

Justin Van Wert, senior in agricultural business, has been an active member of Dance Marathon for four years. This year he is a co-director on the Executive Board for Recruitment and Morale.

“[Dance Marathon] has been looking at expanding our PR and making ourselves more visible,” Van Wert said.

Committee members in search of ideas looked at YouTube videos of Dance Marathon organizations on other college campuses and they found a flash mob video from Ohio State University.

“We based part of the event off that and we also saw the Lady Gaga videos from the Campanile getting a lot of attention,” Van Wert said.

Seeing how much popularity the videos were getting influenced the committee members to create a combination of a flash mob dance to carillon music.

“[I thought] an event like this would be a really cool way to get our name out,” said Erin Curtis, an executive board member for Dance Marathon 2011 and senior in kinesiology and health.

After the event was brought up at a Dance Marathon meeting, Curtis talked to Tam about providing the music.

“I read about how she took song requests, so we gave her a list of some possible songs to play and she chose ‘Don’t Stop Believin” because it was apparently the easiest to play on the bells,” Curtis said.

The song choice worked out well for Dance Marathon members because they had already choreographed part of a dance to the song for a morale dance at last year’s Dance Marathon.

“At Dance Marathon, we do a morale dance every hour on the hour. A morale dance is made up of bits and pieces of several songs put together to make about a five-minute song,” Van Wert said.

Since the committee already had part of the choreography, Van Wert said it was easy to get the rest down.

Last Sunday at a committee meeting, committee members practiced the dance for about 45 minutes then did another practice run Thursday at the Memorial Union for an hour. They also posted the video on Youtube for other Dance Marathon members to learn.

“It came together pretty quickly,” Curtis said.

Dance Marathon members have received a lot of positive feedback on the event. Van Wert said they collaborated with professors to let the members run in and do about a 30-second performance in the classrooms.

“It’s good recruitment and people have come up and asked us what Dance Marathon is,” Van Wert said.

Viewers enjoyed the event and thought it did a good job of attracting attention.

“[The performance was] awesome and it really seems like it‘s a good promotion for Dance Marathon,” said Jessica Pearce, senior in human sciences.

Van Wert hopes the event caught people’s attention and helps recruit more members to their cause.

“You’re making a positive difference, especially for people who are not as fortunate as you,” Van Wert said. “It’s great because you’re able to help these kids out, and you even get to meet them one-on-one. It is a lot of fun and you are with a bunch of people who are passionate about the same cause as you.”