Clogging & Old Time Music
Clogging, a/k/a buckdancing or flatfooting, is an American folk dance which originated in the southern Appalachian mountains (North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia). It is percussive mountain dancing. "Clogging" is a misnomer, since it is not performed in clogs, but it is influenced by the step dance (performed in clogs) of white British settlers, as well as the traditional dance of native Americans and the solo "buck & wing" dance of the area's black people.
In the US, there are two major forms of clogging: traditional Appalachian flatfoot dance and precision (a/k/a modern) clogging. Traditional Appalachian style cloggers dance only to live music, either (1) string band music of the southern Appalachian mountains - fiddle, banjo and guitar, or (2) bluegrass music. Precision cloggers, on the other hand, dance to a variety of recorded music, from rock to country & western. Precision clogging emphasizes uniformity, everyone clogging the same step at the same time, and teams wear elaborate costumes with jingle taps on their shoes.
See also: dance, Appalachian mountains
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