May Pole Tradition Continues at Hamden Hall

With a live orchestra accompanying them, Hamden Hall Country Day School second-graders clutched their multi-colored ribbons and began circling the May Pole.

It's a timeless Hamden Hall tradition that brought back memories for many students who recalled their own May Day “wrapping” experience.

“I remember that we practiced a lot and we did a country or folk dance,” said eighth-grader Alyssa Blaise, who sat with her violin in anticipation of playing live music for the May Pole Assembly.

For the first time ever, according to May Pole coordinator Mark McEachern, the May Pole Assembly featured live music by the school’s 40-piece chamber orchestra, the Hamden Hall Sinfonia. Music teacher Tom Gibbons conducts the group, which is made up of Middle and Upper School students.

Gibbons personally arranged the song played during the wrapping of the May Pole, a melody entitled "Cristofori’s Dream" that featured senior Klemens Gowin on the piano.

Second-graders displayed their dancing prowess prior to the actual May Pole ritual by performing two dances: the Virginia Reel and Bingo. Practice for the event took the better part of a month, according to McEachern.

“We went back to the basics with our dance theme this year by doing old-time country dances from the Colonial era,” explained McEachern who took over coordination of the event 20 years ago from Kathy Harris, the co-founder of Hamden Hall’s May Pole tradition.

First introduced in the early 1970s, the May Pole celebration worked in conjunction with the second-grade history unit on Colonial Williamsburg. Students were taught the Virginia Reel – as they were on this day –  to mark the occasion.

Current seventh-grader Christopher Duffy recalled that his class learned to square dance for its part in the May Pole Assembly. “And the May Pole number was the big finale,” he said.

This year’s May Pole Assembly was similar, featuring the two dances first, followed by the wrapping of the May Pole. The second-graders managed 65 wraps around the pole before they got to the bottom of it. By passing the colored ribbons up and over one another, a criss-cross pattern ensued from the top of the pole to the bottom.

Junior Braedon Kohler recalled that when he was in second grade, his class set the record for the most number of wraps around the pole.

Second-grader Zavier Carter said the May Pole Assembly was exciting because he and his peers got to perform in front of a large audience and didn’t know beforehand how many times they would get to circle the pole.

The Assembly kicked off Grandparents and Special Friends Day, so there were lots of people on hand to admire the second-graders’ performances.