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 Clogging
By Lea Marshall
A traditional twist on tap dance
If your studio were to offer just one dance form other than
the Big Three—ballet, jazz, and tap—which do you think would
be most likely to succeed? Be careful how you choose; the
results could surprise you. While hip-hop or flamenco might
seem like enticing elective offerings, a step dance like
clogging could attract more students than you’d think. After
delving into the roots of clogging and speaking to a few
studio owners, we’ve discovered that this folk dance form can
really bring in the folks!
FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE STAGE
Clogging is a particularly inclusive dance form, in both its
origins and its attraction for a wide range of people. What we
know in the United States as clogging actually has roots in
European, African, and Native American folk dances. When
Scottish, Irish, English, and Dutch settlers populated the
Appalachian Mountains during the 18th century, they brought
their traditional folk dances and music with them.
Imagine farmers and their families living way back in the
hills, with no entertainment but what they could create
themselves. Dancing to the rhythm of their own feet, perhaps
helped out by the father’s fiddle, would bring a welcome
change from the work of hunting, plowing, and sewing.
Eventually, exposure to African-influenced step dances
practiced by slaves and to Native American traditional dances
began to seep into the settlers’ folk dance forms, creating
something new.
The word “clog” comes from the Gaelic word for “time” or
“clock” and today’s clogging keeps time with music by
emphasizing the downbeat. Traditional clogging, also known as
flatfooting or buck dancing, was a kind of freestyle step
dancing based on individual dancers improvising their footwork
in time with the music. Contemporary clogging emerged when
this rhythmic footwork began to be paired with traditional
“figure” square dances. That’s when it developed distinctive
traits such as raising the foot more than six inches off the
ground.
Contemporary clogging shoes are similar to tap shoes, but the
metal tap on the shoe’s sole is attached loosely, to provide a
“jingling” sound as the foot is raised and lowered. Beginning
students can try clogging in tap shoes, though this will
produce a different sound. According to Florida-based clogging
instructor Kelli McChesney’s website, beginning students may
also purchase clogging taps and fasten them to sneakers.
During the 1920s the success of a group called the Soco Gap
Cloggers, formed by Sam Love Queen Sr. in Maggie Valley, NC,
helped popularize what we now call contemporary clogging. They
won many square dance com petitions, and in 1939 they performed
at the White House on the invitation of Franklin D. Roosevelt
during a visit by the Queen of England. (Legend has it that
Queen Elizabeth commented that the Soco Gap Cloggers’ style
was similar to English clogging.)
From that point forward, clogging developed into a true
performing art with its own costumes, jingle tap clogging
shoes, competitions, and notation. Clogging is now the
official folk dance of North Carolina and the state dance of
Kentucky. If only the mountain men and women dancing on their
porches 200 years ago could see it now!
AND INTO THE STUDIO
Once they discover clogging, teachers and studio owners around
the country find it to be an ever-more-popular class offering.
Each teacher tells a different story about how he or she first
learned about clogging and then began to spread the word.
“I had seen clogging at a national competition and knew I
wanted to learn that style,” says Gina Wiley via email. She
runs Dancer By Gina in Delphos, OH, and teaches tap at Ohio
Northern University. In the library at ONU, Wiley discovered
some instructional videos by Steve Smith, a well-known
clogging champion and instructor in the United States and
abroad. She used the videos to teach herself and took master
classes with Rhythm-N-Shoes Cloggers so that she would have a
good grip on the form before she began to teach it. “I didn’t
want just tap in clog shoes,” she says.
According to Wiley, enrollment in clogging classes at her
studio took off after she set the finale for her 2000 recital
as a clogging piece for high school students who had taken her
first introductory clogging class. The following year
enrollment jumped, and it has been increasing ever since. Last
year Wiley had to split her beginning-level cloggers into two
classes because she had so many. “I think it’s because of the
high-energy dances we do at our annual dance concert,” she
writes. “We do a lot of country and bluegrass but also clog to
popular songs the kids love during rehearsals. We live in an
area of a lot of small towns and farms. The traditional
clogging with some ‘Yee-hahs’ and country girls and boys bring
smiles to many.”
FROM SON TO MOTHER
Jeanine Baxter runs Catch A Star Performing Arts Center (CASPAC)
in Seymour, IN, and she credits her son, Chris Baxter, with
getting her into clogging. When Jeanine opened her studio 13
years ago, she offered rehearsal space to a local clogging
group she had seen rehearsing in a park. She watched their
rehearsals but wasn’t that interested in clogging herself.
When Chris, who had grown up dancing in his mother’s studio,
came home from college to teach dance for a while, he watched
the clogging class and began comparing it to tap, a form he
knew well. Eventually, says Jeanine, he began to teach classes
and started his own recreational group, the Columbia Cloggers.
Jeanine had watched all of this unfold, attended his
rehearsals and performances, and had picked up most of the
basic steps along the way.
Then, about five years ago, an injury and a bout of bronchitis
sidelined Chris and the Columbia Cloggers grew restless
without their leader. Jeanine got roped
in, and she laughs about taking class from her son. “I had
taught him dance all of these years, and I’ll tell you what,
he had me in tears. He was like, ‘Mom, you’ve got to be able
to pick this up faster!’ ” Once her technique was up to snuff,
Jeanine began performing with the group.
Clogging is now a regular offering at CASPAC, with Chris
teaching the adults and Jeanine taking on the children’s
classes. The studio’s clogging students perform at
competitions, while the Columbia Cloggers perform at local
fairs and festivals.
Jeanine believes that dancing to various styles of music, not
just country, draws in more people than strictly traditional
performances would. The first time Chris took a group of
CASPAC students to a national competition, they won with a
clogging piece set to Michael Jackson’s “Working Day and
Night.”
When the Columbia Cloggers perform at an event like the
Indiana State Fair, says Jeanine, “people will come over and
see what’s going on, and then they get fascinated.” Then, she
says, “we go out into the audience and each grab someone, and
they’ll come up and participate. And that way we have acquired
new members for our group, from just going out and saying
‘Would you like to come up and try it?’ ”
A CARAVAN CLOGGER TAPS IN
Holly Dawson of Springfield, IL, toured as a demonstrator with
Dance Caravan Kids at age 19, and that was when she took her
first clogging class. “I had heard of clogging before but had
really never experienced it or taken classes in it,” she says.
“There was nobody in this area who did that. I had always just
done the basics: tap, jazz, and ballet.”
As a Caravan Kid, Dawson took class with Jenny Ruth White. “I
can still remember the class, like I was there yesterday.
[White] was from South Carolina and she had that real Southern
drawl, and I thought she was adorable,” she says. “I was
hesitant because I’d never done clogging before, but when I
started doing [White’s] routines I realized it was just a tap
background. As long as you had good tap skills, you could do
clogging. And I found that it was a lot of fun and really good
exercise.”
When Dawson opened her own studio, Footlights School of Dance
Inc. in Springfield, IL, in 1996, she didn’t offer clo gging
right away. “I introduced clogging probably three or four
years into running the studio. I had always wanted to expose
my students to it, but I didn’t know how it was going to
fare.” So she offered a clogging class for adults during her
summer session, typically a slower time of year, when it’s
easier to try out new classes. “The [students] were just over
the moon,” she says. “They absolutely loved it. It has turned
out to be one of my most popular classes over the years.”
Like Baxter, Dawson found clogging to be an easy crossover
from tap. “I think that anybody who loves tap would love
clogging as well.” Because she finds it helpful to use the tap
foundation when teaching clogging, she requires one year of
tap experience for students who are interested in clogging.
“It’s a different rhythm, but so many of the steps are so
similar that with my tappers I can just say, ‘OK, this is
called the basic in clogging, but in tap it’s the shuffle
step,’ ” she says.
Dawson was delighted by the success of her clogging classes
and by her adult students’ eagerness to perform. “The most
memorable year,” she says, “was the year that we had 16—I
couldn’t believe it—16 people in the adult class who did the
clogging routine. And it turned out just fabulous.”
Although the success of clogging may seem surprising to those
not familiar with the form, apparently students of all ages
fall in love with it once they’ve tried it. And the rewards
for teachers are clear. Says Wiley, “As for why I teach it,
it’s the energy and smiles from all my students. Clogging is a
great workout and definitely lots of fun! My students get the
chance to learn another style of dance and feel genuine joy
when dancing.”
Photo captions (from top to bottom):
(1st and 2nd
photos)
The annual Georgia Mountain Fair in Hiawassee, GA, attracts
cloggers of all ages and both genders from neighboring states.
Photo by Richard Calmes
Anyone with tap dance experience will be able to pick up
clogging quickly. Many studios find that it’s a popular choice
among adult students. Photo by Richard Calmes
Mix clogging’s high-energy steps with a few shouts of
“Yee-haw!” and you’ve got a fun class for youngsters— and
their older schoolmates. Photo by Richard Calmes
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