When the Foote community gathers for May Day tomorrow, you'll see students performing complex group dances in bright, spring-colored attire. What you won't see is the months of practice--and the progression of learning--that went into preparing for the celebration.

It's a progression that begins in Kindergarten with learning the most basic techniques (making a circle, walking in lines, knowing who your 'partner' and 'neighbor' are) and evolves to far more complex dance steps in the upper grades.

"We are doing things all year to prepare them that might not look like May Day," explains Lower School Music Teacher Tina Cuningham. In Lower School, that includes "play parties," a uniquely American tradition of singing and dancing that emerged as a route around strict religious customs against dancing.

Fourth and fifth graders learn more than a dozen dances throughout the year, practicing dance skills such as forward-and-back and do-si-do that figure into the square dances they will perform tomorrow, as well as other dances they won't perform until sixth grade. In this way, students build a vocabulary of dance figures (or groups of steps) they can apply to any number of dances.

Along with the traditional squares, contras, maypole and sword dances, this year's May Day will feature some new dances with a more international flavor. Kindergartners will dance a polka, second graders will perform a Russian troika and seventh graders will showcase two Israeli circle dances.

"We wanted to open May Day up to represent more people," says Music Chair Ellen Velardi.

Listen for detailed descriptions of each dance tomorrow before each one is performed.