MU Dance Marathon began its Spirit Awareness Week with a surprise flash mob in the student center at 12:21 p.m. on Tuesday.

Students in the area watched as the MUDM group, totaling about 60 people, performed a choreographed dance to live music. The dance began with half of the group, consisting of steering committee members performing by themselves. The second half of the group, which consisted of moralers, whose job it is to motivate participants, joined after the committee members initially captured students’ attention.

The dance culminated when the group chanted “M-I-Z-F-T-K!” at the end. MU Dance Marathon Tri-Director Carly Love said F-T-K stands for “For the kids,” and is Dance Marathon’s slogan.

The dancers wore shirts that carried slogans such as “Cancer sucks,” “For the kids” and “I love Dance Marathon.” The dancers had been rehearsing once a week for the past month.

Students who witnessed the flash mob were encouraged to register for Dance Marathon, which is a yearlong philanthropic organization that fundraises for the MU Children’s Hospital pediatric cancer department.

Dance Marathon will host its feature event on March 10, which includes a 12-hour-long rave from noon to midnight in the Student Recreation Complex. Participants are required to dance for the entire duration, and the event will raise money. Last year the organization received $47,000 in donations.

Moraler Hanna Jalunski said she was performing in the very front of the group during the dance.

“It’s my job to get people excited about Dance Marathon, and usually people are very passive about registering,” she said. “Students will usually wait until they get home to check out our website. This time, I got to sign people up right away, because of the flash mob. It was really cool.”

Love said the flash mob went really well and involved tons of people.

“We’ve always wanted to have a flash mob that used our morale dance,” she said. “So we definitely hyped this event up, and it was really fun.”