Dan Wally Baker

Whether it was called flatfooting, buckdancing, tapping, jigging, or just plain 'ole dancing, percussive folk dancing in the US grew from the traditions of European immigrants, African slaves, and Native Americans and was preserved largely by isolated rural communities where people needed to let loose from a hard week’s work.

 

Team clogging grew from mountain square dance teams which performed at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, NC which started in 1928. Over time these square dance teams added the percussive steps of the buckdancers and flatfooters to their figures.  One such group was the Soco Gap Dancers.  Led by Sam Queen, this group performed at the White House in 1939 when Eleanor Roosevelt invited Bascom Lamar Lunsford to assemble a performance of mountain folk dance for a visit from the Queen and King of England.  The Queen allegedly remarked that the mountain percussive dance resembled "clog" dancing in her native country, and the name clogging has stuck.  

 

In the 1970s, the Green Grass Cloggers infused western square dance figures with high kicks and precision flatfoot and buckdance steps they learned from traditional dancers like Robert Dotson and Willard Watson.

 

Dan Wally Baker's homeplace in Haywood County, NC is to this day a hotbed of fine footwork including the Stompin Ground in Maggie Valley and squares in the summer at street dances called by Joe Sam Queen. 

 

These Appalachian roots source the clogging, partner dance, and square dancing that Dan Wally Baker now hosts in New Orleans, LOUISIANA.