As long as I can remember Clogging has been a free spirited dance, with its history going back to Irish river dance style, I am not sure just how and when it came to North Carolina, but it was brought in by Irish and Scottish settlers.
So when you ride though Beautiful North Carolina mountains, and you hear a Banjo or a fiddle or both, Look out you will see some cloggers.
COAL MINERS do it. Librarians do it. Politicians do it. Some keep their feet barely on the floor, heels and toes thumping with dizzying speed, torsos virtually motionless. Others skip and stomp, or slap their thighs.They’re clogging, and carrying on an old Appalachian tradition. “You don’t need fancy clothes or fancy steps. It’s not important what you do, just that you keep time,” says Jane George, who spent decades teaching clogging and other mountain dance in rural schools. Clogging and its kin are becoming more popular because of standardized steps and increasing interest in southern Appalachian heritage. The dances are no longer relegated to barns and back porches.
Related Tags: Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian clogging, Clogging, Dancing, North Carolina
1 comment:
I did not know what a clogger was until I moved to North Carolina in 1980. Now both my daughters have learned how to clog. The NC General Assembly of 2005 adopted Clogging as the official folk dance, and Shagging as the official popular dance. I interviewed a clogger form Efland, NC the other day. He has written a book based around clogging steps. I really enjoyed it so much that I interviewed Steve Levitt, the author of Journey To The Mountain-A Roots tale and posted the video on www.cloggingblog.com
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