Clogging

Definition
Clogging is a truly American dance form that started in the Appalachian Mountains. It now enjoys widespread popularity throughout the United States and around the world. The word "Clog" comes from the Gaelic language and means "time". Clogging is a dance that is done in time with the music - to the downbeat - usually the heel is used to keep the rhythm.

History
 As the Appalachians were settled in the mid 1700s, the Irish, Scottish, English and Dutch-Germans met and started to combine in an impromptu foot-tapping style. This was the beginning of clog dancing as it exists today. Clogging was often accompanied by fiddle and bluegrass music. Clogging was a means of personal expression in a land of new found freedoms.

For the most part, clogging evolved as an individual form of expression, with a person using his feet as an instrument to make rhythmic and percussive sounds to accompany the music. At the turn of the century, many cloggers began to add this developing step dance to the square dances that had been enjoyed in their communities for decades. One of clog dancing's most renowned founders, Bascom Lamar Lunsford of Asheville, North Carolina, helped to popularize the art of team clogging by adding it as a category of competition in the annual Mountain Dance and Folk Festival held in Asheville during the late 1920's. A group called the Soco Gap Cloggers won the competition with a routine featuring precision mountain figures accompanied by freestyle step dancing. The Soco Gap Dancers became well known for their energetic style. In a performance for the Queen of England, it is reported that her majesty remarked at the footwork as being much like "Clogging" in her country. The term stuck, and the step dance emerging in the Southern Mountains became known as "clog dancing". More Information Please visit: The History of Clogging