"Cloggah!"

The participation of Brandon the clogger in the Atlanta auditions episode of So You Think You Can Dance? has clogging fans all excited. Will he appear in tonight's episode in which the 20 finalists will be announced? Does he have enough dance experience so that he can take his mad clogging skillz into ballroom, lyrical and hip-hop? He was featured in the audition, but didn't get shown in the Vegas bootcamp episode aired last night, in which 200 dancers were cut down to 50, so we'll have to wait until tonight's episode to see if he makes the cut.

I've seen clog dancing once at the Tapestry Folk Dance Center and it looked like great, energetic fun, but I didn't know much about it. A little Google research, and I learned that clogging has its roots in the Industrial Revolution; workers in the mills of Lancashire, England who wore wooden clogs at work, would dance with their clogs. Their competitive dancing was influenced by the influx of Irish workers who brought the tradition of Irish step dancing with them. Immigration brought clogging to the Americas, and in Appalachia, clogging has been a living tradition alongside traditional folk music, both influenced by African dancing and musical practices; Appalachian clogging, like tap dancing, uses an earthier, more grounded stance than the highly erect Irish step dancing. Clogging was featured in early vaudeville (Charlie Chaplin's first performances at age ten were as part of a clogging troupe called Eight Lancashire Lads), and in the US is now danced by precision troupes. People still do clog dancing as a kind of folk dance, or in the Appalachian style, but some kids are mixing it up with hip hop as this folk tradition mixes with popular culture. The "precision clogging" dance teams in this video show how hip hop and clogging meet:

UPDATE: Brandon was cut in the samba round of the auditions, but posted this funny message on clogdancing.com:

It has been an awesome experience. I've made tons of new friends and met some amazing dancers in all styles of dance! I feel like I'm a big star or something and its kinda freaking me out!

I walked into a restraunt tonight and the hostess said to me "You look so much like that guy that was on So You Think You Can Dance the other night!" and I said I am that guy! She then started screaming and slapping me on the arm with the menus she was about to hand me. It was really funny. As we were leaving she asked me to dance for some of the employees because they didn't belive I could dance.

I never imagined that I would get so much attention from 2 minutes of TV time. It's unreal how many messages and nice comments I've recieved on myspace. I also never knew how country my accent is until I heard myself on the show. It was horrible!

I hope everyone enjoyed my performance and continues to follow the show to see how it turns out!

- Brandon Norris