Called to clog

LITTLE ROCK — It resembles tap dancing. It resembles line dancing. It resembles square dancing. It resembles Irish dancing.

It’s in the swinging back and forth, side to side, of the leg. The bending of the raised knee. The way the heel and the toe hit the ground and the loud, decisive sound of the tap made by the white oxford shoe ... a sound that amplifies the music accompanied by the dance.

It’s called clogging, or clog dancing. And one thing’s for sure: Well-performed examples of it are infectious, leaving watchers mesmerized, wanting to join in - or thinking, “this has got to be a great way to stay fit.”

It is.

C.J. Conine, 55, a retired ballet teacher and member of the Konway Kickers, a Conway based competition team, saw clogging for the first time during a trip to Silver Dollar City in Branson. “I had two daughters [who] just fell in love with it,” she says. In 2006, her daughters talked her into taking a clogging class. “They bailed pretty quick,” Conine recalls, “[but] Mommy was hooked.”

That same year, Conine found out she had osteopenia, bone thinning that’s seen as a precursor to osteoporosis. Instead of medication, she opted to take the doctor’s suggestion of taking up a load-bearing exercise. In 2007, Conine returned to her doctor for a bone-density test. The osteopenia was “totally reversed,” she says.

“My doctor asked, ‘What have you been doing for the past year?’ and I said, ‘Clogging.’”

That’s not all. After four years of clogging, Conine has lost 30 pounds.

Someone once asked Donna Bivins if clogging guaranteed weight loss, recalls the instructor, who directs the Konway Kickers and is vice president of the Arkansas Clogging Council. Bivins recalls her reply: If nothing else, it will “pack you in real tight.”

It tones everything, she says - dancing is done mostly from the waist down, so it whittles the waist, tones the legs and gives the dancer “a fine butt.” The upper body gets a workout just by virtue of the dance itself, and is toned through claps and other hand work, Bivins adds.

DOES A BODY GOOD

Clogging, or clog dancing - a rhythmic dance in which tapping of the feet is emphasized, has been brought to the forefront on the TV competition show America’s Got Talent by such standout teams as All That and the Southern Belles - who “showed the world how modern clogging could be,” says Leona Miller of Jonesboro. Miller is president of the Arkansas Clogging Council and director of the Crowley Ridge Cloggers, an exhibition team that performs at various venues but does not compete.

Clogging includes basic movements (double toe, basic step, double step, rock), grouped together into two-, four- and eight count steps and put to music. As beginners advance, the step names grow more creative: Shave and a Haircut, Cotton Eyed Joe, Pothole.

The dancing can be performed at different tempos, slow and folksy, fast and intricate - and, these days, to all music genres, not just the bluegrass music with which it has been traditionally associated.

Although the footwork can get pretty fancy-looking when performed by advanced cloggers, “all steps, no matter how advanced, are just different combinations of the basics,” Miller assures.

Described as “a truly American dance form,” clogging goes back to the Appalachian Mountains and their mid-18th-century settlement by Irish, Scottish, English and Dutch-German immigrants, according to A Brief History of Clog Dancing by Jeff Driggs of Cross Lanes, W.Va., clogging instructor and editor of the Double Toe Times (doubletoe.com).

“The folk dances of each area met and began to combine in an impromptu foot tapping style, the beginning of clog dancing as we know it today,” Driggs writes, adding that fiddle and bluegrass music was the accompaniment of choice.

Clogging was a “melting pot” of a dance. As it began to spread, Cherokee Indians, blacks and even Russian gypsies influenced it.

Why the name “clogging?

“Clog” is a Gaelic term meaning ‘time,’” Driggs explains. The dance is done in time to the downbeat of the music, “usually with the heel keeping rhythm.” It’s also similar to flat-footing, foot stomping, buck dancing and jigging, with which the term clogging has been used interchangeably.

During the late 1970s, clogging emerged as a line dance, Driggs writes, adding that during the 1980s clog-dancing workshops and conventions grew, along with new line dances. Now, national events,such as the Clog Convention hosted in various cities by The National Clogging Organization attract competitive teams from all over the world. There are even clogging cruises.

Modern clogging is influenced by other forms of dance, and again, many groups clog to music other than bluegrass. “Everything that you can dance to, we clog to,” whether it’s Latin, Cajun, Irish or even sacred music, Bivins says.

STRESS MEDICINE

Miller has been clogging since June 1980 when she and her fellow square-dance team members saw clog dancing at a National Square Dance Convention in Memphis. “We came home and decided that looked like great fun and something we needed to do,” she says, and the Crowley Ridge Cloggers group was formed.

Miller praises clogging for providing “wonderful stress relief.”

Bivins, 70, and a 20-year clogging veteran, is originally from California and never saw clogging in her youth. She first encountered the dance in Raleigh, N.C., at a party being held during her children’s regional soccer competition. “I was so mesmerized that I could not even eat my dinner,” she says.

She began taking clog dancing lessons in Mississippi, where she lived at the time, and eventually came to direct a team there. But today she’s a proud resident of central Arkansas, where for the past nine years she has directed the Konway Kickers ... which, in fact, has beaten her original team in national competition three times.

Bivins recalls one student who, when she began to dance, was so heavy she haddifficulty getting around. After she began taking lessons, she lost 37 pounds. “It keeps you trim,” Bivins says. “It really, really keeps you trim.”

And, Conine adds, “you don’t get too old for it, that’s the other thing.” She has gone to national conventions and seen cloggers as old as 90.

“I’m not talking shuffling. I’m talking just truly getting up and clogging ... and being able to perform.”

Kathey Huskey-Wilson, 55, one of the Crowley Ridge Cloggers and also an instructor, has seen what clogging does for women age 50 to 75 in her recreational class. “They just move better,” she says. One student in particular has been able to keep her diabetes and blood pressure under better control.

Wilson, a 25-year veteran of clogging, credits dancing with keeping her weight and heart rate down. She still remembers the amazement of her doctor and his nurse a couple years ago, when she went in for a checkup and was found to have a resting heart rate of only 40. “‘I haven’t seen anyone with a heart rate that low except Lance Armstrong’” the doctor told her.

That doesn’t prove clogdancing will turn you into Lance Armstrong, but it obviously hasn’t hurt Wilson.

AND GOOD CLEAN FUN

Of course the best exercise is the kind in which health benefits take a back seat to the pleasure of the activity.

Gina Broyles, the instructor for the Ozark Rhythm Cloggers of Mountain View,will attest to that.

“Come and join in on the fun,” Broyles urges the clogging curious. “That is the most important thing in clogging, is to have fun.”

That goes for men ... whom, according to Bivins, have beenunder-represented in clogging circles. “Men seem to think it’s sissy,” she says. But she scoffs at that assessment.

“I don’t care how ugly you are, but if you can dance, you’ve got all the women that you want.”