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The
Bailey Mountain Cloggers were organized in 1974 by students
at Mars
Hill
College
in the mountains of North Carolina,
near Asheville. The
Bailey
Mountain
name is derived from the
mountain adjacent to the college campus.
This college
clog
team carries influence from an older championship team in Mars Hill
called
Bailey
Mountain
"Square" Dance Team. Comprised of young adults from the college and town, these
dancers in the spring of 1950 toured the Southwest with
Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who is credited for giving the name Bailey
Mountain
to the team.
By the late
50's, precision clogging entered the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in
Asheville
with James Kesterson and the
Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers. Until then, only Smooth Big Circle Dance, called Mountain "Square"
Dance, and freestyle
clog
dancing were part of the
folk festival. One such precision
clog
team influenced the Bailey
Mountain
Cloggers in their early years; the Green Grass Cloggers.
During the 1980's Bailey
Mountain
began competition
clogging and expanded its
clog
repertoire to include more
than precision
clog
routines: Big Circle Smooth,
Freestyle, Country Hoedown, Kentucky Running Set, Line Dance, Show, and Percussive dance routines Today, the students who
comprise the dance company, 45+ from 12 different states,
come from various dance traditions, representing a number of
ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Each student
clogger becomes a unique part of the
Bailey
Mountain
tradition, blending the old
with the new into a larger mosaic for the future. Each year
this long championship tradition recreates itself anew, and
showcases its traditional and contemporary dance routines in
an annual clogging concert each spring.
Being one of a few
college-based performing
clog
teams in the nation, with art performance grants and college credit
courses, the Bailey Mountain Cloggers serve as ambassador of
goodwill for the college and the folk dance traditions of
the Southern Mountains.
During their 29-year
history, the Bailey Mountain Cloggers have performed
throughout the United States
and internationally in Canada, Mexico,
England, Scotland, Austria, and
Ireland. From the Kennedy Center in
1996 to the Austrian Alps Performing Arts Festival in 1997;
from the world premier in 1998 of "Mountain
Legacy" in Asheville, North Carolina to the
Ulster-American Folk Park's Appalachian Festivals in
1998-2001; from the "Making A Difference"
performance for the BBC from Belfast, Ireland, viewed by
over 5 million throughout Europe to a performance on
Broadway in 2000; the Bailey Mountain Cloggers Folk
Dance Company has established a national and international reputation for
American
clog
dance excellence.
Sources: Mars
Hill
College
Archives, Bailey
Mountain
Cloggers Collection, Bascom
Lamar Lunsford Collection Scrapbook
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