Iowa
TV9 Rewind: Eastern Iowa catches clogging fever
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – Dust off those dancing shoes. It’s time to clog.
Clog dancing dates back centuries, originating from different forms of Irish, English, Scottish, German, Cherokee and African dances.
But it wasn’t until the 1970s that clogging took Iowa by storm, and cloggers will tell you it’s not the same as square dancing.
“It is different that we do have taps on our shoes,” one clogger told TV9’s Kevin Kendall in 1979. “We do have a lot of movements out there that are used in square dancing.”
Clogging does adopt some movements from square dancing, but it can incorporate many different types of music. At the time, disco music was a popular choice among some cloggers.
“That’s for the young ones. We can’t hardly keep up with them. That’s for the kids, that’s what they use is the disco tunes”
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