Created by bluemouth inc. A bluemouth inc. production, copresented by Boca del Lupo and the Cultural Olympiad and supported by Harbourfront Centre. At the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre on Wednesday, February 10. No remaining performances

You won’t get home on the same bus ticket you came down on—Dance Marathon ran about four hours the night I was there—but you won’t mind: this show is a sweaty, trippy party.

To get into it, you’ve got to like dancing; you can sit the whole thing out if you want to, but there wouldn’t be much point. Whole swaths of the evening are just about grooving to a combination of live and recorded tunes that range from the Andrews Sisters’ “Bei Mir Bist Du Schí¶n” to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Rick James’s “Super Freak”. But there’s a major competitive element too. A referee who prowls around on roller skates eliminates you if your feet stop moving, and there are more brutal contests as well, including “derbies”, which involve couples race-walking in the tango position. I got eliminated when I wiped out during one of those.

I was bitter for about five minutes, but then I got into it again. You have to hand in the number you’re wearing if you get the boot, but you can keep bustin’ moves, and that’s mostly the pleasure to be had here. Since I was there without a partner, I was free to dance with whomever I wanted, which is a great way to go. It helps that local bandleader Steven Charles directs a hot ensemble, and that the singer, Ciara Adams, is phenomenal as she covers everything from Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” to wailing rock ’n’ roll.

The creator, bluemouth inc.—a company that’s based in Toronto and New York—plays with notions of authenticity. The Depression-era dance marathons that inspired the show often included embedded performers, and the same device is used here. I felt a bit betrayed when the partner I was temporarily assigned off the top turned out to be a ringer, but what the hell. It’s cool when people emerge from the crowd to perform choreographed routines, and the line between performers and audience members is so pleasantly blurry that it virtually doesn’t exist.

Company members also perform rehearsed bits during the hourly five-minute breaks. Some of these are surrealistically memorable—the blindfolded guy contorting in a handheld spotlight while a woman recites text and the video screen fills with images of beluga whales, for example.

I didn’t catch a lot of content in any of this. Some of the spoken material deals with cancer and death, but the thematic possibilities presented by a duration-based event feel underrealized.

Still, I had fun.