Hi Hugh
I have started watching "strictly" again ,now that we are down to the best dancers.
I think that all the dancers left in the competition are very good ( apart from Gavin ,though he has improved greatly )
Pam is amazing for her age and I hope that she wins ?
I was switching channels later on and came across ..
Come Clog dancing . The programme is on iplayer
I learnt to clog dance in 1975 .Both North East and Lancashire styles. We also Rapper danced .There is a snippet in the show.
In 1979 , my side ( dance group ) went to Germany to perform and the germans were absolutely taken with our performances.
In the rapper ,we used to end up revolving at high speed . with our swords interlinked and a girl would be standing (very still
)
in the middle !
As a ps ..My wife never danced , apart from a party . disco type dance , which most people do !
Until 9 yrs ago , when she decided to join me at Tango Argentina . In 2004 ,in Buenos Aires , she danced with Carlos Copello ( world famous) in front of about 400 people .
Amazing , like Pamela Stephenson , what you can do later in life , if you want to !
Here is a note from the show.
At the height of the industrial revolution in the last decades of the 19th century there was a dance, now rarely seen, that resounded through the collieries and pit villages of the north east of England - the clog dance.
For conductor and musician Charles Hazlewood, clog dance has become an obsession and he plans to put it firmly back on the map by staging a mass flashmob clog dance.
Helped by a team of local enthusiasts led by expert clog dancer Laura Connolly, Charles recruits and trains 140 men and women from across the north east, and one sunny Saturday in a busy square in central Newcastle they ambush the public with a six-minute performance.
Along the way, Charles delves into the history of this fascinating folk dance, learns and performs a few steps himself, and meets and works with some of the key characters keeping this ancient dance alive.
