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Musical statues

Children's party game

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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.

Watch videos about Musical statuesExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

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.

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