Maypole Dance Kit

Amaze the neighborhood of your school with an outdoor Maypole dance.  If you have room around your school’s flagpole, you can perform many forms of Maypole dances with this easy to assemble kit.  The kit comes with everything but ribbon.  Choose your school colors or any combination of two or three contrasting colors.  You will need about six or seven yards of ribbon for each strand.  If you want to use three colors, alternate the ribbons in a pattern so that one color dances clockwise and the other two counterclockwise.  In the example, the boys pull a red ribbon and the girls take a yellow or green.

Open the hose connectors to fasten the circle of ribbons around the pole.  Clip the chain to your rope and you’re ready to go.  Have the dancers select their ribbon and form a circle before you hoist the ring up the pole.

There are many types of Maypole dances.  A great preparation for the Grand right/left is the North Carolinaplay party “Bingo.”  Begin with dancers in pairs randomly scattered around the room. Shake hands with your partner and then travel to a new partner and shake left hands. Continue alternating hands as you travel through the space.  To perform the play party, dancers circle right on the first phrase, dance in and out twice for the second phrase and then alternate past their partner to perform the Grand right/left while spelling “B-I-N-G-O.”  This weaving figure is also found in “Lucky 7” from English Country Dances by Martha Riley.  If you’re really lucky, the dancers will be able to wind and unwind the ribbons.

Bingo

There was a black dog
sat on the back porch
and Bingo was his name.
There was a black dog
sat on the back porch
and Bingo was his name.
B-I-N-G-O,
B-I-N-G-O,
B-I-N-G-O
and Bingo was his name.
B – I – N – G – O.

Photos by Brian Burnett, Eagle Point 2012
Email: b.burnett08@hotmail.com