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A Nigerian professional dancer is hoping to etch his name into the record books by performing non-stop for an entire week in Lagos, in an attempt that has turned a public park into a buzzing street festival.
Benjamin Daniel, who performs under the stage name Ben Dancer, is seeking to remain in motion for 168 hours, a target that would eclipse the existing mark for the longest individual dance marathon by a wide margin. The 33-year-old began his attempt on Tuesday, 22 September, and is expected to reach his goal in the early hours of Tuesday morning if he manages to keep going without stopping.
The current benchmark stands at 127 hours, a feat achieved by Indian dancer Srushti Sudhir Jagtap in 2023, when she was just 16 years old. Her routine drew heavily on kathak, one of India's most prominent classical dance forms. Ben Dancer's proposed duration would exceed that record by 41 hours, a substantial gap in an endurance discipline where even a single extra hour can push the human body to its limits.
Guinness World Records has not yet indicated whether the attempt will be ratified as an official record. The BBC has reached out to the organisation for a response, though confirmation typically follows a detailed review process that can take weeks or even months after an event concludes.
Despite the uncertainty over official recognition, crowds have been turning out in force at Freedom Park in Lagos in recent days, with young supporters cheering the dancer on, recording his every movement on their phones and swaying along from behind the barriers. The atmosphere around the venue has come to resemble a block party, with videos from the attempt spreading rapidly across social media and drawing yet more visitors to the site.
For those in attendance, the spectacle has been both inspiring and personally meaningful. "It's a beautiful moment. Seeing how far he has come and witnessing him achieve this feat made me incredibly proud and grateful to God," Uche Anumudu, one of the onlookers, told the BBC.
Ben Dancer is no newcomer to his craft. He has been dancing professionally for 18 years, a background that his team credits with giving him the technical foundation and stage presence needed to sustain such an ambitious undertaking.
His performance has been far more than a test of stamina. Throughout the marathon, he has woven together Nigeria's diverse dance heritage with the country's rapidly evolving internet culture. Afrobeats has remained a constant thread, complemented by genres such as fuji, jazz and zouk. At various points he has traded his dance attire for traditional Nigerian garments, including the flowing agbada and the dashiki.
With more than 250 ethnic groups across Nigeria, the country's cultural landscape is extraordinarily varied. Ben Dancer's team has stressed that the performance is designed to celebrate that richness rather than simply push the boundaries of physical endurance, framing the attempt as a cultural statement as much as a sporting one.
Preparation for the marathon was intense. According to his team, the dancer underwent a rigorous fitness programme before starting, overhauling his diet to emphasise carbohydrates and concentrating on cardiovascular conditioning to prepare his body for the relentless demands of the week ahead.
During the attempt itself, he has kept his food intake light and relied on fluids to maintain his energy. Under the rules of the record category, he is permitted five minutes of rest for every continuous hour of activity. Rather than pausing every 60 minutes, Ben Dancer has opted to dance for several hours at a stretch before drawing on his accumulated rest time, a tactical choice that allows him to preserve momentum during long stretches of performance.
A medical team has been stationed at Freedom Park throughout the attempt, ready to intervene if his condition requires it.
Observers have noticed how the physical toll has fluctuated over the course of the week. Emmanuel Ulelu, who visited the performance twice, said the strain was evident early on. "On day two, you could see the stress," he recalled, adding that after dancing at the venue himself for just three hours, he questioned how Ben Dancer could possibly continue. Yet when Ulelu returned 16 hours into day five, he found the dancer looking more energetic than before. "It reminded me that we're capable of doing unbelievable things when how badly we want something matches and surpasses the difficulty of achieving it," he said.
Others have expressed a mixture of admiration and concern. Moronumubo Akodu, who has made repeated visits to support the dancer, said she was struck by his resolve but uneasy about what the effort might cost him physically. "It is actually insane but I am so proud of him," she told the BBC.
The attempt also reflects a broader phenomenon in Nigeria, where record-breaking feats have captured the public imagination in recent years. In 2023, Nigerian chef Hilda Baci cooked continuously for 93 hours and 11 minutes in Lagos, a milestone Guinness World Records officially certified. Her achievement triggered a wave of enthusiasm for record attempts across the country, even as others have since overtaken her mark. Guinness has said it received more than 1,500 new applications from Nigeria within two months of her cook-a-thon, spanning pursuits such as reading, singing and crocheting.
Whatever the outcome of the ratification process, Ben Dancer's week-long performance has already drawn significant attention, transforming a Lagos public space into a stage and offering a vivid illustration of how endurance, culture and digital virality can converge in contemporary Nigeria.
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