THE ORIGINS OF CLOGGING

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While authorities still debate about the origins of both buck dancing and clogging, one fact does seem pretty sure: Clog team, dancing originated in western North Carolina. The late Sam Queen who is regarded as the father of team clogging-formed the Soco Gap Dancers in the 1920's, and that act was among the first to take the Appalachian art out of the mountains and introduce it to a wider public.

As a logical consequence of the formation of dance groups came team competition ...and the first such event occurred in 1927, on the Asheville town square, when five different clubs vied for honors. (Ever since that time, clogging competition has been included in the annual Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, the oldest gathering of its type in the nation.)

However, during the early days when these teams were assembling, mountain hoofers still referred to their style of dancing as "buck dancing", "flatfooting", or "square dancing". It wasn't until a number of years later that the pastime and the name by which we know it got together.

In 1939 the Soco Gap Dancers—along with the Coon Creek Girls from Pinchem Tight, Kentucky—were invited by President Roosevelt to perform at the White House while the King and Queen of England were visiting. Queen Elizabeth (the present monarch's mother)who, it's reported, tapped her foot eagerly during the exhibition—remarked, "Why, that's just like our clogging" . . , and the name is still applied to the dance style that Sam Queen's group made famous. [EDITOR'S NOTE: If you'd tike to see some old-style cloggers in action, tune in to Country Classics, a program, shown on many PBS stations throughout the U.S. ]

DEFINITION OF TERMS

There are two types of clogging: freestyle and precision. The former-considered to be the more traditional of the two styles-features free-flowing and improvised steps. Precision clogging, on the other hand, is a relatively new development in the dance form. It was originated in the late 1950's by James Kesterson of Henderson County, North Carolina, who—in an attempt to modernize the dance and make it more interesting to audiences-developed set routines and standard calls for his Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers.

Needless to say, there's some resistance among clogging purists to the notion of precision footwork. Such folks feel that the "homogenization" of the steps, terminology, and calls may cause the art to lose much of its individuality and its charm ...and tend to blur a significant piece of our mountain heritage.

SETTING THE STAGE

There's an old saying that clogging is "caught. not taught". Nevertheless, MOTHER's fledgling dancers signed up for a few lessons at the local YWCA, and we found that the steps we learned in our classes were valuable in giving us a reference point to work from.

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