Musical statues
Children's party game

Musical statues is a game played at children's birthday parties. Originating from the United Kingdom, the game is similar to musical chairs and is part of the "Jerusalem games", of which elimination is an element . It is also known as freeze dance in the United States and statue dance in Philippines.
01Rules
Players stand in an area, usually a dance hall, with one person controlling the music. When the music starts the players should dance along to it, and when it stops, they must freeze in position. Any player moving or laughing while the music has stopped is out of the game. Play continues until there is only one person left, who will be announced as the winner.
02Variations
In the newspaper dance game, players must dance on a sheet of newspaper without stepping off of it. Whenever the music stops and players freeze, the pieces of newspaper are torn in half to a smaller size. For another version, pairs of players dance around the sheet, which they must step on as the music stops; the newspaper being folded to smaller sizes as the game progresses.
In the traffic light game, players run around pretending to be vehicles, and must freeze when the game runner shouts "red!"
03World record
The world record for musical statues was set on 16 August 2013. Over 1,500 students at Mansfield State High School in Brisbane, Australia, participated in the event.
04In popular culture
In the opening credits to the Australian children's animated series Bluey, the characters play a game of musical statues.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Musical statues”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Purbeck Valley Folk Festival 2021 - Musical Statues.jpg by Stephen and Helen Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0
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