

#Kids limbo bar how to#
You win by being the one that gets closest to the ground compared to everyone else! a Kid play Limbo danceĬheck more: A-Z About Bunny Hop dance How to Limbo? You win limbo not by being the one that doesn’t knock the bar off. If they manage to pass through the bar, it is lowered slightly, and the game continues until the bar is knocked off. The game is over when the player knocks off the bar or touches it with their chest. In other words, the player must support the entirety of their upper body weight using their back muscles and spine. No part of their body should touch the bar as they cross it.Īdditionally, no part of their legs should touch the ground other than their feet, and their head shouldn’t move from side to side. To pass underneath the bar, the player must arch backward. However, in informal settings like house parties, the horizontal bar can be held in the air by two people on either end instead. The centerpiece of the game is a horizontal bar held aloft at the chest level of the player with two vertical bars. We have already briefly explained the rules of the dance earlier. Sources pointed to the limbo dance’s striking similarity with the legba or legua game in Africa, which is a kind of funeral game with the same basic rule. You’re basically moving from life to death when you pass across the bar. Much like the bar that gets lower the more passes you make through it.Īnother interesting origin story we have heard is that the limbo dance signifies limbo – the land in-between life and death. But no matter how much they try, they still don’t seem to fit, so they get lower and lower. That means enslaved people back then had to contort their bodies every which way and arched their backs to fit. They were designed more like cargo holds than passenger cabins, so people were packed together like sardines in a can. It says that the limbo dance is meant to symbolize enslaved people being taken into the galleys of slave ships. One of the most popular interpretations is quite dark. But there have been many hypotheses over the years about the limbo dance history. Little is known about the actual origin of the dance. But it was not until the 1950s that the dance became popular. Most sources agree that what is now known as the limbo dance appeared in Trinidad around the 1800s. So, Trinidad and Barbados are common answers to the question “Where did the limbo dance originate from?” Specifically, it’s a derivative of the word “limber”. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the root of the word “limbo” can be traced back to the local variation of English spoken by the people from Trinidad and Barbados. The word “limbo” itself dates back to the 1950s. Most people will be surprised to learn that the limbo dance is very old. Besides being extremely fun to play and hilarious to watch, the fun doubles when you mix it with alcohol and drunk people! Limbo Dance Origin You probably already see why it’s such a popular party game. The game ends when the player can’t lean back far enough anymore to clear the bar. The bar is lowered slightly, and the player has to do it again and again, with the bar getting lower and lower. When they emerge on the other side, they have “won” a round. It’s going to be set at a certain height (usually at chest level, around a meter or so off the ground.) Anyone who wants to “play” must lean backward and try to fit their body underneath this bar. So long that it’s straight, rigid, and laid horizontal, it’s fine. The dance involves a horizontal bar, which can be anything: a long wooden pole, a broom handle, a curtain rod … you name it. You’ll know immediately when someone or a party is hosting a limbo dance session.


And we do mean it: there’s no other dance like it out there.
