What do you mean you’ve never danced around a maypole? What kind of misspent youth did you have? Don’t worry; we have some simple step-by-step instructions just in time
First, catch your maypole
If you’ve access to an already-standing pole, you can skip (hop and dance) this step. Otherwise, get a pole of at least 4m (try B&Q) and attach a number of long ribbons to it. You’ll need one ribbon per dancer, of which you’ll need eight, including yourself if dancing. Are you dancing? (Response: Are you asking?) Sink your pole firmly into some soil. In front of a church looks pretty but you’ll need to work with what you have.
Start choreographing
Gather your dancers and split them into an A team and a B team. Stand them around the pole at equal intervals from alternate teams, so A, B, A, B and so on. Brook no complaints from dancers; things are about to get a lot trickier.
Go in, out, in, out (but don’t shake it all about)
Concentrate now – this is no May Day Picnic. The A team dancers should skip clockwise around the maypole and B team dancers, anticlockwise. Don’t worry, you shouldn’t collide because… Dancers should skip alternately left and then right of the dancers they pass, going ‘over, under, over, under’ with their ribbons. Still with us? Good. On an ‘over’, pass your ribbon over the dancer coming towards you. On an ‘under’ duck under the ribbon of the dancer coming towards you. If you’re untangled at the end treat yourself to a flagon of mead.
The instructions above are from our May issue’s Miscellany pages, which are packed with seasonal silliness each month.
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