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Music to get your feet tapping. Why not get up and do some clogging. Great exercise and teaches rhythm and foot coordination.
Originating in Lancashire around the end of the 18th century, clog dancing was a natural activity for the people who went to work in the textile mills of the industrial revolution.
Clogs were a warm, dry and cheap item of foot-ware and the metal rims made a sharp tapping sound on the flagstones. The weavers would rattle their feet to keep warm and tap out rhythms
in time with the machinery to keep their spirits up through the long hours at work.
These simple steps were put together to make dances and by the 1850's every village had their champion clog dancer, much in demand at weddings, barn dances, harvest homes etc.
The dances soon spread and developed regional styles, emigrants even took them to the Appalachian mountains of America.
The "Corner Boys" of Lancashire met on street corners and learned to dance on flagstones with iron-shod clogs creating showers of sparks as a finale. Often
two dancers would be accompanied by a boy playing the kazoo and would receive wild applause and collect pennies in an upturned hat.
Clog dancing reached its height in popularity in Lancashire between the 1870's and 1890's but during the 20th century picture houses and variety shows offered people alternative entertainment. Fortunately there was a revival in interest in the 1950's enabling the old dancers to pass on their skills to future generations.
Although wearing clogs is thought of as a feature northern life,
clogs were worn in the south of England in the 19th and 20th
centuries. |
