Clogs are Cool! #DancePassion

English Dance and Song Summer 2019

This article was published in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts. 

“Clogs are cool!”

In September 2018, BBC Arts approached EFDSS about a project they had in mind. This resulted in our participation in their #DancePassion 2019 event, which took place in May. Peter Craik, EFDSS’ Director of Marketing and Communications, tells us more.

In 2017, the BBC ran a week called #OperaPassion, with the aim of spreading the word and busting a few preconceptions about this particular art form. Following its success, they were in talks with One Dance UK about doing a similar project for dance. It would take the widest possible remit – wider than they did for opera. Yes, they would go behind the scenes of rehearsal and creative processes for ballet and other ‘high art’ dance forms, but they particularly wanted to emphasise something that everyone could get involved in. EFDSS was in a strong position to contribute, given the participatory nature that’s essential to so much folk dance. Our biggest challenge was to decide which dance forms we could show within the inevitably limited opportunities.

Cue a series of discussions and meetings, coordinated by BBC Arts and involving many partners. The #DancePassion week was designed to build up to a day of live streams on the internet from hubs around the UK. EFDSS was assigned to the Studio Wayne McGregor in Here East, London – the former media centre of the 2012 Olympics. We decided to run a 30-minute presentation on clog dancing, led by Laura Connolly, champion dancer and EFDSS’ Dance Development Manager. After a short demonstration, accompanied by fiddle player Ben Moss, Laura talked with presenter Brenda Emmanus and then started a workshop for mixed-ability participants in the studio – encouraging viewers at home to join in, too. It was amazing how far Laura was able to take the group within 20 minutes and they clearly relished the experience. There was some excellent feedback:

‘It looked fantastic – really inclusive’, said one participant.

We found other ways to get involved over the week, sharing videos about social dancing and morris dancing and making sure that folk dancing got the recognition it deserves. Morris got more coverage with the broadcast of an hour-long film by Richard Macer, which left him declaring ‘men and women everywhere, I urge you to take up the bells and the hankies’. The Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society was well represented and featured in a BBC Scotland film, which went viral.

Of course, the ultimate test for such events is whether they help us to reach new people – encouraging them to get involved, or at least to think about folk dance. Just a few weeks after #DancePassion took place, an excerpt from Laura’s workshop has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on the BBC Arts Facebook page. Over 2,000 people watched one of our #DancePassion videos on Facebook and many more people interacted with our parts of the project on Twitter. The BBC Arts team picked Laura’s workshop as one of ‘nine amazing moments from #DancePassion live’. “Clogs are cool”, they said. So I think we succeeded.

Laura Connolly shares her thoughts about participating in #DancePassion: “What a fantastic opportunity to get English clog dance out there, streaming clog dancing live to the nation, alongside such prestigious dance companies such as the English National Ballet, Akram Khan Company, Rambert and Motionhouse, to name but a few.

“English folk dance comes with many clichés and this was our chance to show how it can be visually exciting and technically challenging, yet also very accessible when broken down into rhythms. English clog dance is steeped in cultural history and I’m doing my best to keep it alive through teaching and performing as often as I can. Who knows, maybe the world clog dance championships of the 1880s will be revived again one day?”