May Pole Dancing

The Provo City Gallery Stroll is held on the first Friday of every month--and it's a day I wait for with much anticipation. We walk up and down University Ave and Center Street and check out the local art hung in the shops. Most of the shops give free refreshments too. This month they had a vintage flea market inside Velour (a concert hall of sorts for local bands) and a free dance party and slurpees at Sammy's (a cool hole-in-the-wall burger joint just off Center Street). My friends Lauren and J.R. even got themselves drawn as a fruit (J.R. was a raspberry and Lauren a strawberry).I've been doing the Gallery Stroll monthly for almost a year now. I've discovered shops in Provo I never knew existed.

When we were checking out the vintage flea market my friend Jenny ran into a girl she knew. The girl handed her a flyer and told her to come to the pre-season Farmer's Market the next day to do a May-pole dance to bring in spring. We were a little skeptical about what a May-pole dance could be, but we figured it was appropriate considering the Farmer's Market is kind of a family thing. It was raining Saturday morning but Jenny and I went anyway. We bought a cookie from the market and waited for the May-pole people to show us what to do. No one was coming and we waited for awhile. Finally we found the people we saw setting the pole up and asked when it would be starting. They said the instructor didn't come because of the rain and said we could just try to figure it out. We gathered 12 people and luckily there were some little kids who had done this before. We weaved in and out while holding our ribbons and created a cool braid on the pole. Then we had to unwind, all the while dancing to music played by a blue-grass band. It was SO fun to bring in spring with an unusual ritual. Well anyway, I made the paper. Here's the link: http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/307723/17/