Countryfile Live – take 2!

This year we were lucky enough to enjoy two weekends at Countryfile Live – including the first ever Northern event at Castle Howard. It wasn’t quite as sunny as the Blenheim event (Friday was particularly damp) but as you’ll see below we still had a lot of fun! We were pleased to have a few new faces on the team for our first journey north and we’re sure they’ll be back for future events.

Countryfile Live @ Castle Howard

We had an absolutely brilliant few days at Blenheim Palace last week, but now it’s time to look ahead to next weekend and another Countryfile Live event – this time in Yorkshire!

15th-18th August 2019 at Castle Howard, Yorkshire – visit the official website here.

We’ll be putting on several displays each day, with public participation encouraged! Keep an eye on our twitter page (@themayteamdance) for daily updates about performance times.

 

Our weekend at Countryfile Live Blenheim

It’s been a few days since we returned from a wonderful few days at Blenheim Palace, and now the dust has settled we are enjoying looking back through our photos! We were joined by so many enthusiastic dancers of all ages – from young children seeing a maypole for the first time to older visitors who remember last dancing round a maypole many years ago when they were at school!

We were thrilled that Pudsey and Anita Rani danced with us again – the BBC Countryfile Live twitter page shared a wonderful photo of them dancing so head over to our twitter page to have a look (@themayteamdance).

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy these photos from our little corner of the Village Green.

Countryfile Live @ Blenheim Palace

We’re really looking forward to returning to Countryfile Live this year! It’s always a highlight of our calendar and we’ll be performing on all four days, so we hope to see lots of you there!

1st-4th August at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire – visit the official website here

We’ll be doing 4 or 5 dance sessions each day, including an early afternoon showcase performance of a variety of traditional dance styles, plus there’ll be loads of opportunities for you to join in with maypole and country dancing. Each maypole session starts with a short display from the mAy team, before we invite the public to join in with dances around the mega Countryfile Live maypole!

Check out the official timetable for our performance times, or follow us on twitter @themayteamdance for daily updates.

Our Countryfile Live top tips:

  1. Arrive early to beat the traffic!
  2. Don’t miss the dog and duck show (a mAy team favourite).
  3. Bring a reusable water bottle – there are free water refill points dotted around the site and if it’s a hot day you’ll need them!
  4. Enjoy a picnic lunch on the Village Green while you watch our traditional dance showcase – we’re performing at 1.15pm on Thursday, and 12.45pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
  5. Don’t forget to say hi to Pudsey at the Children In Need tent – you might also find him dancing round the maypole with us!

(These are not our 2019 performance times! Photo from 2017)

Spring Live 2019

We had a fun-filled couple of days at the South Of England Showground last month, running Maypole and Sussex country dance sessions for visitors to Spring Live. It was a little chillier than last year but fortunately the rain held off and we were joined by lots of keen dancers of all ages! When not performing, the team also enjoyed visiting the rest of the showground – whether this was to check out the food trucks, buy new plants or admire the alpacas on display!

The beginnings of summer…

We started our 2019 season at The Swiss Garden on 28th April as part of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at the Swiss Garden, Biggleswade. We were joined by Alice and the Mad Hatter (photos may follow!). The event manager’s comment was “as always a crowd-puller and you’re so good at not getting everyone tied up in knots!”
 
Now we’re preparing for our busiest weekend of the year, appearing at the Geffrye Museum tomorrow (4th May) and Spring Live at the South of England Showground on Sunday and Monday (5th & 6th May). Later in May we’ll be appearing at Fulham Palace, and then in August the two Countryfile Live events (a regular feature of our summer for a few years now) at Blenheim Palace in (Oxfordshire) and Castle Howard (Yorkshire).

Our new website

Thanks for visiting our new site. We’ll be adding more archive content over the coming days, and we’ve got a busy summer of events coming up so watch this space for photos and tales from our 2019 displays!

A flurry of events for May Day

A busy time for the mAy team; we went to Butser Ancient Farm and met the Wickerman on the 29th April, returned to the Swiss Garden on the 30th April and Bath University on the 6th May. What an enjoyable time we all had! Photos from these events can be found in the Gallery.

Thanks to the Phabulous PHAMS we had the mAy Team sashes for the first time. Badges and more costume to come.

End Of Season

Following the outstanding successes of our events at the Swiss Garden and Countryfile Live, The mAy team already looks forward to returning to those events next year. No doubt there will be many other enquiries.

To be able to do all of these we may need more members and are likely to be holding a workshop day in the spring. If you are a musician or dancer and would like to be involved, please let us know.

At the moment most of our events are in the South East and South Midlands.