About BRTC

Blue Ridge Thunder Cloggers (BRTC) was organized in the summer of 1997, although some of our dancers have danced for many years with other groups.  We dance to all types of music including: traditional bluegrass, country, pop rock, Irish, orchestral.  We perform at many local festivals, school functions, community events, retirement centers, malls and private parties.  In August of 2005, BRTC traveled to Ireland to co-host a dance workshop and perform at the oldest fair in Ireland.

BRTC offers classes to people of all ages and proficiency levels.  Prior dance experience is not required in order to participate in our beginner classes.  New beginner classes start in March and September.  We are also available to teach traditional figures at your group get-togethers.

BRTC meets in a converted Quonset hut in Lovettsville, Virginia, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It is a community where tradition and family are very important and BRTC tries to maintain that atmosphere.  Many of our dancers are generations of the same family.  BRTC accepts students ages 6-101.  You do not need to bring along a partner, but you may want to bring along a friend to share the fun!

FORMED

June 1997

INSTRUCTOR

Mary Smith is a native of the plains of rural northeastern Montana.  The roots of clogging lie deep in her heritage as her grandparents include natives of Ireland and the mountains of southwestern Virginia.

Mary moved to Austin, Texas, in the early 1980s upon college graduation, and it was there she took a class in beginning clog dancing.  She got on stage for the first time as a performer in the spring of 1988 and by 1990 was teaching the beginner lessons for her group, the Clickety Cloggers.  At that time she also became the Director of the group’s exhibition team and began choreographing routines.  She continued in this capacity until a job change brought her to the Washington, DC, area in the fall of 1995.  In 1997, she helped form the Blue Ridge Thunder Cloggers and became the group’s instructor and choreographer.  In addition, Mary teaches locally and nationally at clogging workshops.

WHAT IS CLOGGING?

Clogging is a truly American dance form that began in the Appalachian Mountains and now enjoys widespread popularity throughout the United States and around the world.

As the Appalachians were settled in the mid 1700s by the Irish, Scottish, English and Dutch-Germans, 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.  Accompanied by rousing fiddle and bluegrass music, clogging was a means of personal expression in a land of new found freedoms.

The word "clog" comes from the Gaelic and means "time."  Clogging is a dance that is done in time with the music -- to the downbeat -- usually with the heel keeping rhythm.

As clogging made its way to the flatlands, other influences shaped it.  From the    Cherokee Indians, to African Blacks and Russian Gypsies, clogging has enveloped many different traditions to become truly a “melting pot” of step dances.

For the most part, clogging evolved as an individual form of expression, with a person using his feet as an instrument to make rhythmic and percussive sounds to accompany the music.

From: Teaching Clogging--

The American Step Dance

By Jeff Driggs