A Step Into the Record Book : Dance Teacher Glides 126 Hours

Scott Michael savored the thrill of victory despite the agony of the feet.

The 31-year-old dance instructor from Huntington Beach waltzed his way into the record books at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday but kept on dancing 5 1/2 hours longer, setting a world solo dancing mark of 126 hours at the Stanton studio where he works.

“When we go for a record, we go for a record,” he said Wednesday morning after surpassing the old record of 120 1/2 hours. “I’m just getting my second wind.”

But around 4 p.m., the wind ran out.

“It was a lot more fun and exciting than what I thought it would be,” he said of his six-day effort to get his name in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Although he had to be awakened with smelling salts on two occasions and showed signs of weariness by Wednesday, Michael’s mother, Thelma Michael of Anaheim, said he held up well despite only three hours of sleep.

Michael was allowed to take a five-minute break for each hour that he danced, but by putting the minutes in the bank, so to speak, he was able to string them together for catnaps, the longest about 40 minutes.

Michael used the record-setting event, which began at 10 a.m. on Friday, to raise funds for victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Werner Kuhn, executive director of the AIDS Response Program of Orange County, said that $2,000 to $3,000 in pledges and several dancing hours sold for $20 each to about 20 partners would go toward the Garden Grove-based program’s support services, such as victim counseling.

Michael said he decided to raise money for AIDS after an acquaintance died last year of the disease, which attacks the body’s immune system.

Kuhn said that Michael was particularly moved by the paralysis that some AIDS patients suffer in progressed stages of the disease. “And here (as a dance instructor) he can move so much,” he said. “It triggered something in him. I knew he was going to make it.”

To help him reach his goal, Michael’s “pit crew” of relatives and friends “played games with him . . . would tell him the news” to distract him from the weariness, said Sharon Miller, a student of Michael’s for 2 1/2 years who was his partner when he surpassed the record.

Once Michael had the idea, it took only two weeks to line up the benefit marathon, said Bob Pyrah, owner of the studio at 12104 Beach Blvd. “It was almost impromptu.”

Although dressed in a tuxedo, Michael gave his feet a break by wearing sneakers. Not typical ballroom shoes, he said, but “I might start a fashion trend.”