You can dance that long if you happen to be a 13 or 14 year old Apache girl.
The Sunshine Dance, as it is called, is a dance that goes on for four days and is danced only by one person. It is done by a dancer who is celebrating the fact that she is becoming a woman.
It takes one year for all the preparations for the dance to be made, which include special prayers and making the costume, which weighs ten pounds. During the dance, the girl sits and runs and kneels.
At one point in the ceremony, yellow pollen from wild flowers is spilled all over her while prayers are said. On the last day of the dance, the girl is painted with a mixture of corn meal, pollen, and ground-up stones of different colors.
While the dance lasts, the girl can not bathe, touch her skin, or drink from a glass. The Sunshine Dance is a great honor, and the girl that performs one is supposed to live a long and happy life.
