The Capitol City Cloggers will be cranking out their moves for audience members during the Hague Centennial.

The clogging club originates out of Bismarck and specializes in line formation clogging. The club gets together twice a month in the winter, but in the summer months they are busy practicing not only once a week as a group, but also individually.

They put on about 25 performances a year all over North Dakota and the surrounding region. Many performances are done in nursing homes for free. The current leader, Patty Vollan, calls her group a nonprofit organization because of the donation of their time in nursing homes, but also because they generally make little money on top of their gas and food expenses when they are paid. However, paid shows are a mere quarter average of the full year’s schedule.

“We’re not in it for the money,” said Patty, who is sure she speaks for all the performers when she says that they clog simply for the joy of it.

They usually do not advertise for this reason and since word of mouth has seemed to work well so far as the best form of advertising for them.

The club was founded by Alan and Irene Roth in Bismarck and Mandan. Before the creation of the group they specialized in square dancing, but when they went down to Arizona, which is the “hot spot” for clogging, they learned a whole lot of new moves that they brought back with them to Bismarck/Mandan. Alan was a square dance caller for 40 years, and he and Irene introduced clogging to the Bismarck/Mandan area.

Patty Vollan took leadership of the group in 1983. She has been retired for 10 years so she has plenty of time to commit to the clogging club, but the rest of the members, with the exception of one, are employed full time on top of their commitment to the group.

“It’s a challenge,” Patty commented. The members need to commit a lot of their time to the group if they really want to do it.

Patty teaches a six-week introductory class once a year, which turns out to be approximately nine hours. Half of the attendees decide that the amount of time that have to be put in to participate in the group will not fit with their schedule and don’t move on. Those who decide that they do want to continue must practice with dedication not only weekly with the whole team but also on their own.

Clogging is a mixture of many ethnic dances that came from such peoples as Germans, Spanish, Irish and even slaves. The uniqueness of the dance has even made it known as the American step dance. The further south in America one goes, the more diversified the clogging becomes. Even the other two clogging clubs in North Dakota each specialize in different styles of clogging. The group out of Fargo, the Cloghoppers, specialize in line formation, which is what the Capitol City Cloggers also do, but with a slight variation. The other group is the Fiddlekick Cloggers out of Dickinson, who specialize in couples formation.

The clogger’s most valuable asset is the clogging shoe. Each shoe gets what is called jingle taps, which are two pieces of steel designed to make the desired sound on hard wood floors. One of the taps is placed on the toe, the other on the heel, so that with the mere flick of a foot the clogger can tick away at the floor to the beat of any song.

The leather shoes also give the dancers’ feet room to breath, for the performance is quite a cardiovascular workout. The cloggers won’t eat for two to three hours before a performance, but afterwards, said Patty, “You’d better have some food!”

The challenges of clogging can also come from different weather. The crew once danced at Strasburg in 111 degree weather, and then has also danced in as low as 40 degrees. But the biggest problem is if they don’t have enough room.

“We’ve had flat top trailers rockin’ and rollin’,” Patty recalled.

The group was able to perform on the flatbed trailer, but people don’t realize just how much movement the cloggers do, and therefore how much room they need.

One of the cloggers, Donna Kocher, was born and raised in Hague and has been a part of the clogging club for 18 years.

The group hopes to haveabout 10 to 11 cloggers at the Hague performance, and all of them will be advanced dancers. Patty explained that some songs are just harder than others, and so the more inexperienced dancers would not be able to participate for that reason. The show will be about 30 to 40 minutes in length and will include nine songs. The songs can vary in style, from traditional to contemporary.

The Capitol City Cloggers will perform at the Hague Centennial on Saturday, July 5, at three o’clock.