Clog-Dancing: Tapping Into a Good Time

MAGGIE VALLEY, N.C. â€”  The biggest attraction in this little town on the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a dance hall for cloggers that reeks of popcorn and chewing gum instead of stale beer.

“We’re way ahead of everywhere else in this (clogging), but in other ways we’re 50 years behind,� says Kyle Edwards, the owner-builder of “The Stompin’ Ground,� otherwise known as the World’s Capital of Cloggin’.

“There’s no drinkin’ in here. The town has no drug problem, no crime. Cloggin’ is better ‘n joggin’.�

A corpulent, perspiring clogger coming off the dance floor proves that. “First time I ever did a day’s work in seven minutes,� he gasps while reaching for a frothy mug of root beer.

Edwards’ barn-like edifice opened in 1982, the culmination of a 25-year dream. It is dedicated to the mountain square dance, a hybrid tap-dance called clogging, which originated nearly 200 years ago from the English reels, Scottish flings and Irish jigs of early settlers.

Whoopin’ and Hollerin’

Clog-dancing evolved as a way for mountain folks to celebrate. Nowhere can you find the whoopin’ and hollerin’ louder, or the dance steps sprightlier, than right here in this squeaky-clean, tongue-and-groove palace.

The dance floor is as big as a bowling alley, and surrounded on three sides by seats in tiers rising to a rear balcony. The fourth side is a stage. Live Bluegrass and country music reverberates from the rafters every night from May 1 to Oct. 31.

“There’s 200 people in this valley,� says a man named Kyle, clad in blue jeans, flannel shirt and baseball cap. “The hall holds 2,000. Some nights the cars overfill the parking lot for a mile in each direction.�

The popularity of this dance is indisputable. The United States has more than 1,000 organized clogging teams. Members dress in coordinated uniforms, colorful ruffled crinolines for the ladies, pressed cowboy-style duds for the men, and all wear two-piece staccato taps on their shoes, which jingle when they walk and tap out an energetic rhythm when they dance.

Teams come here to compete by dancing standard forms, then freestyle, much the same as competitive figure skaters.

The competition draws an enthusiastic audience, who come to watch or just listen to the music and dance. People cheer for their favorites. Around here that would be the Magnum Cloggers, the current world champs. The team is led by siblings named Burton and Becky, who also are the individual U.S. and world champion cloggers.

Burton struts about the Stompin’ Ground as if his daddy owns the place, which he does. The Edwards’ kids have been clogging all their lives. Burton lifts his booted foot to show me his heel and toe taps. Then he flashes his large gold champion’s ring.

Good Clean Fun

“This is good clean fun,� Kyle says. “It keeps families together.�

That appears to be true. Kyle’s wife Mary Sue helps run The Stompin’ Ground. The house Cross-Country Band is led by Big John Wiggins, who was once a Texas Troubadour. The clean-cut girl-and-boy singers are his children, Audrey and John. Other families line the rows of seats. Cloggers typically range in age from 7 to 70.

Evenings of song and dance will have team, individual and open dancing, in which teams mix comfortably with audience participants.

Music fills the hall as the Magnum Cloggers step into the spotlight. It looks as if the routine has been tightly choreographed until you look down at their feet. The very best cloggers, exemplified by a near-floating Burton, move their upper body hardly at all, while their feet kick and buck in a blurring, barnyard-inspired frenzy of motion, punctuated by the clicking taps on the polished hardwood floor.

Although team members move in careful time to the peppy music, the independent mountain heritage is evident in the completely idiosyncratic steps each dancer performs. Every pair of feet stamps its own pattern by private design, and then, one by one, members step out to “hammer down� for a few measures in a solo spotlight, while the rest of the team vamps in the background.

After a round of respectful applause, the seated audience empties onto the floor. Big John calls out various square-dance routines, turning the hall into a large rhythm instrument vibrating with the cadence of the taps and fueled by the stamina of the hearty dancers.

You can count numerous out-of-state license plates in the parking lot on any given night, as well as buses from neighboring states as far away as Minnesota. Cloggers from all over the country make the pilgrimage to this site of the Clogging Hall of Fame, which is a photo and trophy gallery in the lobby.

“I’ve got trophies everywhere,� Kyle says. “Couldn’t fit ‘em all in my house.�

Taking Lessons

Many people come to compete against the world champs or to take lessons from them. Day-long clogging workshops are a sociable way to pass time between nighttime shows.

Burton and Becky travel around the country when the hall closes at the end of October, giving demonstrations and clinics coast to coast.

Another annual highlight here in Haywood County is the North Carolina International Folk Festival in early August. Also known as Folkmoot U.S.A., it is the only European-style festival of its kind held in the United States. It features native-costumed dancers and musicians from India, Germany, Holland, Spain, England, Ireland, Turkey and Mexico performing in folk art shows, right along with mountain cloggers and fiddlers.

One year exuberant Turkish dancers concluded their whirling-dervish dance by imbedding sharp ceremonial swords two inches into the gleaming wood floor of The Stompin’ Ground. “I didn’t care,� Kyle says. “They put on a heckuva show. They were great entertainers.�

As for the rest of otherwise peaceful Maggie Valley, it is probably one of the least frantic Smoky Mountains Park border towns. By contrast, two of its neighbors--Cherokee, N.C., and Gatlinburg, Tenn.--are crammed with stores selling rubber tomahawks and instant photos of tourists standing next to uncomfortable-looking Indians hired to dress in brightly decorated buckskins and feathered headgear.

Woman in Bonnet

This town prides itself on trash cans decorated with a picture of a woman in a bonnet. The woman donated the receptacles--$5,000 worth--to keep the town clean. It seems to have worked.

Maggie Valley is about an hour east of Cherokee, depending on traffic on the windy mountain roads. It has a petting zoo, golf course, many restaurants and gift shops with cheap souvenirs as well as some offering more unusual items.

The Different Drummer makes hand-thrown pottery. Yesterday’s Crafts features authentic mountain quilts, carved and whittled wooden objects and an antique doll museum of several hundred pieces, including a doll once owned by young Humphrey Bogart.

Terry’s restaurant in neighboring Lake Junaluska serves a thrifty all-you-can-eat buffet of unattractive but good catfish.

Typically, dining-out options are family oriented, tending more toward the down-home than the gourmet. Accommodations in small motels or condominiums are plentiful. The valley also has a Holiday Inn with more than 2,000 rooms.

Another big attraction is the Ghost Town in the Sky, the town’s longest-running tourist magnet. It is a cowboy theme park that you reach by an incline railway or chairlift. From the top of the mountain you get expansive views of the valley 1,200 feet below.

Kids enjoy the melodramatic Western shoot-outs on the ghost town’s Main Street, complete with bad guys falling from rooftops. Indoor dance-hall shows are performed by costumed thespians, and there are numerous rides. A summer schedule includes well-known country acts such as Freddie Fender performing from a precarious-looking stage outdoors on the mountainside.

For people who come here to visit the great outdoors and the tallest mountain peaks in the eastern United States, Maggie Valley also offers direct access to the least-visited part of the nation’s most-visited national park. More than 12 million visitors are expected this year in the Smokies, but only about 2.5% of them will pass through Maggie, and far fewer than that know about the Cataloochee Valley section of the park.

Substantial Chunk of Nature

The 29-square-mile section that takes in the preserve’s eastern boundary between Maggie Valley and the Tennessee state line is known mostly to locals. It’s a little harder to get to than most popular tourist areas, but it is still possible to find this substantial chunk of nature uncrowded.

There are few cars on the old logging roads. The relatively wild country is laced with bold streams and crowned by tall mountain peaks.

You can fly into Asheville, which is about 35 miles from Maggie Valley. The Folkmoot Festival is scheduled this year for Aug. 2-8. For more information, contact Folkmoot U.S.A., P.O. Box 523, Waynesville, N.C. 28786.

For information on the Stompin’ Ground, including the various workshops and competitions, contact Kyle Edwards, Route 1, Box 676, Maggie Valley, N.C. 28751; phone (704) 926-1288. The biggest bashes at the clogging hall are usually on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the season, although weeknights tend to jump during the busy summer months between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Daytime weekend workshops sometimes attract several hundred people.

For additional area-wide information, call North Carolina Tourism at (800) VISIT-NC.