Welcome to the home of the Laurel Fork Cloggers. I'm Loretta Blagg. I keep the books at the feed and seed store in the daytime, and on Monday and Thursday nights for the last fifteen years I've taught clogging in the community center gym. We've got about forty dancers right now, from five years old to past sixty, and I'm proud of every one of them.

My mama could flatfoot. She'd get up at a square dance or a fiddlers' convention and dance with her feet so close to the floor you'd swear she wasn't moving, and every head in the room would turn. I learned from her and from watching the old people, and later on I learned team clogging, with the taps and the lines, and in 1984 the community center asked if I'd teach a class. Eight girls showed up that first night, the youngest six and the oldest fourteen. The fourteen-year-old, Melissa Simone, teaches the Tiny Taps with me now.

Folks use the word for a few different things, so here's how I'd put it.

Flatfooting is the old mountain way. One person, no taps, regular shoes, dancing loose and easy to a fiddle tune, mostly from the ankles down, feet close to the floor. Every flatfooter has their own style. You learn it by watching.

Buck dancing is close kin to flatfooting, a little louder and more showy, with more heel and more kick. Some people use the two words for the same thing, and I won't argue with them.

Team clogging, or precision clogging, is what we mostly do. The dancers wear shoes with taps, dance in lines or formations, and everybody does the same steps at the same time, right on the beat, to bluegrass and country music. When a team is right, forty feet sound like two. When it's wrong, you can hear it from the parking lot. That's what judges listen for.

We do all three. Every class ends with five minutes of flatfooting, free style, so nobody forgets where it came from.

Classes are Monday and Thursday evenings in the community center gym. Beginners start every September. This year's beginner class started Monday, September 13, and there's still room if you hurry. The full schedule, and a glossary of the steps for beginners, is on the Steps and Schedule page.

What it costs:

Dues are $20 a month per dancer, $15 for the second dancer in a family and $10 for the third. Tiny Taps are $15. That pays the community center and the music, and the rest goes to competition entry fees.
Shoes. You need a pair of clogging shoes with double taps, the kind with a loose plate that jingles. Figure $50 to $70 for shoes and taps together, less for the little ones. Beginners can start in any hard-soled shoe for the first month. We keep a box of used shoes that outgrown dancers have left behind, so ask before you buy.
Costumes for competition dancers, about $45 to $60 for the season, made by our costume mothers.

We went to three competitions this summer: the Blue Ridge Hoedown in June, the Fourth of July Clog-Off over in Laurel Valley, and Mountain Folk Days in August. Between them we brought home 22 first places, 15 seconds and 5 thirds. All three of our precision teams won at least once. Every result, with every dancer's name, is on the 1999 Results page.

I tell my dancers the ribbons are nice but they're not the point. The point is to dance well and be proud of it and help the person next to you. That said, I hung every one of those ribbons on the wall of the gym, and I look at them.