Maypole Dance - The School in Rose Valley

SRV students have been dancing the Maypole at the school’s annual May Fair since 1929, and they’ve been dancing it more or less in its current form since the early 1970s, when Nancy Ewald re-choreographed the dance to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Seventeen Come Sunday“, the first movement of his English Folk Song Suite. SRV alumni often report still getting goosebumps or lumps in their throats watching the dance decades after they performed it themselves. The Maypole Dance draws former students back to the May Fair year after year to remember their roots. It’s a tradition binding generations of students in celebration of their community. This video was recorded by Linda Goss in 2015. Heidi Hammel provided the history.