In the crazy sea of color and energy that is THON, it seems impossible that anyone could stand out in the hyped crowd. However, Joe Jonas did just this when he and his band, DNCE, gave a surprise performance at the Bryce Jordan Center for THON 2017.
The crowd went wild as the pop-rock band took the stage. They kicked off their performance with their hit song “Cake by the Ocean.” They also performed classics like The Spice Girls’ “Tell Me What You Want” and Britney Spears’s “Oops I Did It Again.”
Joe Jonas launched the crowd into an even bigger frenzy when he shouted the familiar chant, “We are!” He also said he was there supporting the event “for the kids.” The crowd screamed when the pop star jumped down from the stage and crowd-surfed his way through the audience to stand on some of the tables in the center of the BJC.
“It was freaking Joe Jonas!” says THON dancer Taylor Zeiders, a sophomore nursing student dancing for Mont Alto. Zeiders. She and her friend Erica Newton, a senior business major also dancing for Mont Alto, had been in dancer storage, but as soon as they heard the performance begin, they sprinted to get as close to the stage as possible.
“We were right by the table he stood on,” says junior education major Katie Dykeman, a dancer for NSSLAJ. “Oh my god, that was so crazy!” Dykeman says. She and fellow NSSLAJ dancers, junior education major Sierra Bigler and junior CSD major Sierra Hobbs were “all the way in the back” when the lights went down and then they ran as fast as they could to get near the stage.
Shannon Turner, a junior dancing for the Women’s Club Basketball Team, was arguably the luckiest girl on the floor during the performance, catching the guitar pick tossed into the crowd by DNCE’s lead guitarist Jinjoo Lee.
Photo by Janie Cassady
The Nittany Lion joined the band onstage, linking arms with bassist Cole Whittle and jumping up and down to the beat.
Photo by Janie Cassady
DNCE took THON by storm with their surprise performance, filling the room with energy and boosting the morale of spectators and dancers alike.
