“Samantha,” “Outhouse Step” and “High Horse”-these terms have meanings ranging from the obvious to the cryptic for most of us. But for south suburban clog dancers, those phrases are a signal that sets their feet a-jumpin’.
In the language of clog dancers, each of those expressions stands for a particular eight-count step. Put the steps together and it’s a dance.
That dance is an American tradition, begun by Irish, English and Scottish settlers in the Appalachian Mountains. According to Maxine Wallis of Joliet, president of the 80-member Illinois Clogging Association and member of the local American Pride clogging team, the dance may have started as a jig practiced by English factory workers wearing wooden shoes. On their lunch hour, she said, they mixed the steps of the Irish jig, the arm movements of the Highland Fling, the high stepping of some Canadian step dances and the heavy downbeat of German music. Other influences were the hopping and stomping style of the African slave and the heel-and-toe accented rhythms of Native American ceremonial dances.
At a recent American Pride performance at the Salem Village retirement center in Joliet, those influences came together. A downhome country beat starts the cloggers kicking and dancing. While spectators clap their hands and tap their feet in time to the music, the dancers keep their arms behind their backs, giving priority to their footwork. The energy is contagious, prompting the audience to get up out their seats and stomp along.
In its early days, clogging was also known as flatfooting, hoedowning, jigging, buckdancing and footstomping, Wallis said. Competitive clog dancing originated in western North Carolina in the 1920s. The first competition took place in 1927 in Asheville, N.C. Now competitions are regularly included in the annual Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival.
Nationally, the dance is promoted by the National Clogging Leaders Organization (CLOG), based in Lilburn, Ga. A not-for-profit group, its 6,000 members come from every state but Hawaii as well as from Australia, Canada and Japan. According to executive director Joann Gibbs, the popularity of clogging may stem in part from the fact that its participants don’t necessarily need partners, as they do in square dancing.
“Everyone knows there are more women dancers than men,” Gibbs said. “Females love it.”
The group held its annual convention Thanksgiving weekend in Nashville, where Wallis enhanced American Pride’s repertoire by picking up cue sheets from dance teams throughout the country, compiled in a notebook almost an inch thick. Those sheets provide instructions for different steps and routines taught at the convention. CLOG also offers workshops throughout the year and is working on a certification program for instructors.
The popularity of country-western line-dancing has drawn many people into clogging, Gibbs said, although the two dance forms are very different. “Clogging is a dance of sound, while line dancing has no percussion,” she said. “It’s like trying to compare ballet with tap dance.”
According to Susan Lee, director of the dance program at Northwestern University in Evanston, clogging is a uniquely rural dance form. She traced its roots back to English and Irish immigrants,adding that the name refers to the way the feet are used, tracing small patterns in a flatfooted manner.
“Within the rural community, clogging was passed on like storytelling,” Lee said. “You would learn from someone who might embellish it, giving it a personal component.”
While Gibbs compared clogging to country line dancing, Lee drew parallels to tap, adding that unlike tap, clogging’s roots stayed regional. “Clogging stayed close to the community,” she said. “You won’t see Grandma getting out there to tap dance but you will see her out there clogging. It’s very multi-generational, which is really exciting.”
The two dance styles differ in other ways as well. Clogging is louder than tap dancing, thanks to floating taps on clogging shoes. Clogging taps are secured only in the middle, unlike regular taps, which are tamped down all around. The loose connections result in a jingle, rather than the flat rap of tap, Wallis pointed out.
And the American Pride team is not the only group jingling in the southern suburbs. “Clogging’s just a lot of fun,” said Jean Morgan of Sauk Village, a member of the Deep River Cloggers. “It’s a lot faster than dancing country-western (style).”
Morgan said her team, comprising 10 members from the Calumet City and Dolton area, has been together for more than 13 years. They dance mostly to bluegrass music, although they also include some country and popular music among their selections. “We can dance to anything with a good beat,” she said.
Morgan said the group, like American Pride, stages demonstrations to familiarize people with the dance.
“Not too many people know clogging,” Morgan said. “I always tell people it’s like tap dancing, except more vigorous.” That lack of visibility may explain why the group, which has offered lessons in clogging, failed to do so this fall due to lack of interest. They hope to offer lessons next year.
Wallis and some of her teammates teach beginner and intermediate clogging classes Monday nights at the Strike ‘N Spare bowling alley in Lockport. In addition, the team practices at 7 p.m. Wednesdays in the basement of team member Don Sass, sessions that last until after 9. Sass’ home in Homer Township features a wood-covered floor, perfect for the jingling taps that will fly for the full two hours or more, working on problem areas, revising other steps and learning new numbers.
Both teams are non-profit, providing performances and demonstrations for free. They occasionally request small donations to pay for equipment and transportation.
Indeed, instead of a profit, clogging requires a monetary commitment. American Pride members have a variety of costumes, ranging from country-style white cotton skirts and fringed white blouses with red and blue sequins to red skirts, white blouses and blue vests for the 4th of July. Costumes can run more than $100, and pairs of clogging shoes, ordered from a manufacturer in the South, cost $40 a pair. Wallis said she goes through a pair about every six months.
While Wallis can’t recall exactly when she began clogging, she said she always loved to dance. Though jazz had been her interest, she joined the Touch of Class cloggers in the Joliet-Lockport area. When that group disbanded in 1989, some of its members took the name American Pride, and Wallis was unofficially appointed choreographer/director.
She has the responsibility for coordinating demonstrations, which have been held in locations that include Daley Plaza (where dancers during a summer performance could feel the hot concrete through their shoes), the marble rotunda at the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet and on the family stage at the 1992 and ’93 Taste of Chicago.
Wallis also scouts locations to ensure that the team won’t be dancing on unsuitable surfaces. Grass and carpet muffle the sound of the taps, concrete floors are hard on the legs, and tile can be too slippery, Wallis said, leaving wood as the preferred surface.
In addition, she also choreographs dances, which can be a time-consuming pastime. One dance, set to Charlie Daniels’ “Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues,” took her three months to finish, while other dances take her three to four hours to choreograph. Times vary, she said, by the length of the song and the complexity of its rhythms.
In the beginning, pure twangy bluegrass music was clogging’s natural accompaniment. While most of American Pride’s dancing is set to bluegrass or country music, the troupe has expanded its musical range to include rock selections such as “Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill Haley and the Comets, “Chains of Love” by the British band Erasure and Afrika Bambaataa’s “Just Get Up and Dance.”
However, Wallis said, many traditional cloggers resist a soundtrack of rock or rap, so those selections are not performed at conferences. “Gradually we are seeing more of a tap influence,” she said. “Some dancers are combining acrobatics and lifts, but at competition it’s still very traditional.”
Over the past several years, the American Pride Cloggers have performed locally at the Concerts on the Hill sponsored by Will-Joliet Bicentennial Park in Joliet.
“They’re very energetic and they present a different type of show,” said park manager Georgiann Goodson. “They always get an enthusiastic response from the audience.”
The first time Jeneene Brown saw American Pride, the group was auditioning for Erin Molloy, coordinator of the country-music stage for the 1992 Taste of Chicago. Brown, of the Mayor’s Office of Special Events in Chicago, needed country acts Taste’s Not for Kids Only stage, so she “borrowed” the cloggers from Molloy.
“I thought they were very good,” Brown said. “People enjoyed them. I had never actually seen clogging before. I thought it was different, and the crowd really liked it. They were very energetic.”
Brown added that she enjoyed the group so much, she brought them back the next year.
Joliet resident Kriste Teats, who has been clogging for two years, is the newest member of the team. Her cousin Beckie Hodock of Lockport was attending classes at Strike ‘N Spare and brought Teats along. Teats attended a class and while her cousin has given it up, she has continued, in love with the exercise and music.
“I love to dance, although I’ve never taken tap or ballet,” she said, adding that she has grown to love performing. “At first, I was really scared to go in front of an audience. But as I did it more and more, it got easier.”
Don Sass turned to clogging 12 years ago, after taking square dancing classes. He also loves to dance.
“Once the music starts, my motor starts running,” he said. To Wallis, clogging is more than a pastime. She said it kept her sane through a traumatic year in which her mother died and she got divorced. Her job as billing manager for a medical clinic adds to her high stress. “Clogging’s my outlet,” she said. “These people are my support system.”
Lockport resident and American Pride member Nina Kramer said she first saw clogging performed at a country and western bar eight years ago. “It was just something I really wanted to do,” Kramer said. “It keeps my mind going as much as exercise. I like the high feeling I get from dancing.”
Kramer brought her daughter Christine Carter of Lockport into the clogging family. Carter was living in southern Illinois, and during a visit to her mother one Thanksgiving, she learned a few steps. Carter went home and practiced, and soon her mother was giving her clogging lessons by telephone. In January 1990, Carter and her husband moved back to Lockport, and she began clogging with American Pride.
“If I go over a week without practicing, I get real crabby,” Carter said. “I’ve made a lot of friends clogging. It’s like a big family.”
Lockport Township High School senior Billy Lareau, 17, is hooked on clogging, which he took up several years ago. “It’s addictive,” he said, adding that he has performed for his fellow students at the high school’s annual variety show in February.
And American Pride members agree that one of the nicest thing about clogging is the variety of ages involved. Wallis said she knows of a woman from Peoria who at 78 is still dancing at area workshops and conferences.
“I intend to be clogging as long as I possibly can,” said the 55-year-old Wallis.
Teats adds that she hopes the group will expand. “The more people you have, the better you are,” she said. “It’s a lot more fun.”
And that fun may grow. The American Pride cloggers held auditions in January and added six substitutes who are in training to be full team members.
For information about clogging or to take a class, call Wallis during the day at 708-246-7296 or evenings at 815-744-2757. For those in the Calumet City area, call Morgan at 708-758-1570left message on machine or the Lan-Oak Park District in Lansing at 708-474-5020. For other instructors, call CLOG at 404-925-1475.
