THE ORIGINS OF CLOGGING

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A mysterious disease—characterized by an uncontrollable desire to spend hours
dancing frantically to bluegrass music—is filtering out of the western North Carolina mountains. It's ...

The Southern Appalachian Cloggers in action.

It's hard to say exactly when it happened, but a number of MOTHER's staffers have gone and got themselves bitten by the clogging bug. The whole thing may have started when we admired the Southern Appalachian Cloggers in action at MOM's seminars last year. But then, it may also have been prompted by a wistful desire to join in on the action at Bill Stanley's ...a bluegrass-and-barbecue spot in nearby Asheville, North Carolina. At any rate, by the time the annual Mountain Youth Folk Festival rolled around this spring—and the Asheville Civic Center was packed with petticoat-layered and denim-clad youngsters dancing their hearts out—MOM's crew was distinctly envious ...we had clogging fever.

Well, it wasn't long before some of us decided to look further into the history of the old-time Appalachian dance form and to learn a few steps (Which we'll pass on to you later in this article). After all, clogging's fun ...it's sociable ...it's downright lively ...and almost anyone can learn how to do it. In fact, we'll almost stake the ranch that—by the time you finish reading this armchair guide to clogging—you'll be itching to put your feet to the test.

THE ORIGINS OF CLOGGING

Clog dancing probably had its roots in the traditional fancy steps of the Irish, Scotch, and English immigrants who settled in the Appalachian Mountains. One historian has suggested that the dance originated in the mill towns of England ...where workers—who commonly wore stout wooden-soled shoes would go out into the cobblestone streets during their lunch breaks and hold impromptu dancing contests.

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The steps developed by those factory laborers—along with the hornpipes, jigs, and reels of the Anglo-Saxon cultureswere then influenced, in the New World, by the heel-and-toe-accented rhythms of Cherokee ceremonial dances and the routines performed by blacks in minstrel and medicine shows. It's out of this synthesis, many people believe, that "buck and wing" or "buck" dancing was born.

Performed by one person, usually to the plaintive strains of mountain fiddle music, buck dancing features close-to-the-ground lateral foot movement, with the torso held fairly stationary. (In fact, some of the oldtime buck dancers prided themselves on their ability to "go it" with water-filled teacups balanced on their heads.)

Modern clogging resulted—the theory goes from a combination of buck dancing and square dancing. It often incorporates traditional square dance figures, performed to the quick tempo of bluegrass, but features a heavier beat and more emphasis on the rhythmic use of the heel than does buck dancing.

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