Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers

Last February I discovered during a dinner party conversation that several of my friend all recalled and were enthralled by the performance of the Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers during a recent screening of Murray Lerner's film 'Festival' that had been on the telly. Forget Bob Dylan, I had loved this moment in the film ever since I'd first seen it in the 70's.

photo Bob Lindsey

For everyone there, the standout performance of this terrific film too was this clog-dancing troupe of clean cut American teenagers.

Forty two years afterwards they had obviously penetrated the British zeitgeist and must have done so for others as the clip soon appeared on YouTube. I can see that other bloggers have picked up on this YouTube clip with much the same enthusiasm.

Thanks to Tivo, and some wine, that evening we could watch it again and again and soon all the kids and their parents were 'buck and winging' around the kitchen. Since then, when anyone tells me they need cheering up, I send them a link to this clip. It never fails to lift their spirits.

For me, (a naturalised American) it is more than clog dancing but an iconic moment that epitomises America and the optimism of its youth at the time. A marked contrast to the events coming in 1968. It seems a topic ripe for a cultural studies dissertation.

There is a rich history of this folk dance in the UK as well which found its way from the British Isles into Appalachia to be blended with Native American and African dances. I recently went to a concert by Rachel Unthank where she did some clog dancing during some numbers. By the way, the fabulous Rachel and Becky and band will be touring America in September (2008).

A while ago I sent some emails into cyberspace to various folk archives and some clog dancers on the web asking if they had any more information about the troupe and where are they now but I never heard anything back. I appreciate people are busy and when someone random from the UK writes to you, unless you have hit someone who knows exactly what you're looking for, you won't get an answer unless you're persistent. I'm afraid I sit somewhere between a serious researcher and a enthusiastic fan.

I'm so glad to learn that one of the dancers has now heard of her YouTube fame and can tell us a bit about the story and who the people are. I think it'd be a fantastic feature story to reunite them. Alas, knowing my luck, by the time I could get a greenlight for a magazine feature or TV doc, someone higher up the food chain will have already done it.

The dancer on the end is Sherry Lynn Taylor and she tells us James Kesterson, the leader, is still around. Lots of sources credit him with inventing 'precision clogging' the synchronised dances which became very popular with audiences. Apparently the purists didn't like it though. Very little info about him or the dancers seems to be on the web but the caption of the image above says they won the Lunsford Cup in 61, 62, 63, 64, 65. Whatever that is, it must be quite an achievement. The performances would have been filmed July 23-26, 1964. Enjoy!

beer, coffee and novels

The writer Tessa West answered my appeal on the college intranet so after the core module lecture we hooked up for a coffee at La Parisienne as it's nearby and a latte is only £1.20 there!

With a full time student ID the coffee stall opposite the school will do you a latte to go for £1 which must be the cheapest anywhere. La Parisenne's service can be slow but then we weren't in a rush. With the place being empty, I wasn't going to be self-conscious about talking about me.

Tessa is quick and lively and is very clear about her purpose and ambition with her art, craft, call it what you will. She's got an interesting CV from her work in prisons and sounds like she's into thorough histories on obscure subjects. Something she's working on right now seems a lot more 'nerdy' than water towers.

She gave me her second novel 'The Reed Flute' to read. I gave her one of the last copies of the water tower guide. Her work has themes I can relate to; the power of landscape, grief and longing (and that's the first chapter) and she gets what I'm on about with towers. We shared mad ideas to subvert the publishing system and so who knows what will come of it.

I read it waiting for the bus for the Park and Ride (which turned out to be quite an appropriate setting) and I detected a cadence in the structure. I don't know if that's deliberate and related to music or just a facet of her 'voice' as a writer. Of the writers I know, none of them speak in any way recognisable from what they write. (Although Alan Bennett has about the most perfect voice for his own words). It might be possible with a writer you know well to identify anonymous extracts and you might identify their voices blind but I doubt anyone could match any quantity of anonymous text to a writer's speaking voice

We had to break it off after one cup because we both had things to do: I had to this critical mission to get my laptop power cord PAT tested. To plug a laptop into the college's networt you have to go to the IT help desk in one building for a form where they log your MAC numbers and you sign it saying you won't look at porn. Then you go to the main building to find the caretaker to PAT test your power supply . That done, you then go another building to find another bod in IT tech services to run a virus check. Only then you can go back to IT help desk for your log in password.

This is why I didn't go to the real ale festival being held in the old church-now-venue next to the college at lunchtime. It was hugely popular; by 2 PM the queue snaked down the street for 100 yards. When I went home the church was being evacuated. Two fire tenders and a TV crew were already there and about five thousand blokes standing around a wondering WTF was going on. As everyone was in a jocular mood and no doubt full of a few pints, if there had been a fire, they could have probably put it out themselves.

I might submit this blog as the course requirement to keep a learning journal.