Appalachia

I lived in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina for the last five years, and growing up in Chapel Hill, I would spend part of almost every summer as a child in the mountains with my family.  The Appalachian mountains have a rich cultural history in music and dance, amongst many other things.  Below is a clip from a documentary made in 1964 in Madison, NC, showing a community gathered in a home playing music and clogging.  Notice the how the rhythms of the dancers feet and the rhythm and melody created by the musicians play off each other, and the different partnering and floor patterns.

Appalachian clogging, like in this documentary, as well as Appalachian culture, have been highly influential on many choreographers across genres.  Last winter while visiting a friend in Mahattan, we went and saw New York City Ballet perform Balanchine's Square Dance.  In this work Balanchine joined the traditions of folk dancing with classical ballet.  He said, "the American style of classical dancing, its supple sharpness and richness of metrical invention, its superb preparation for risks, and its high spirits were some of the things I was trying to show in this ballet."  In the original choreography, Balanchine had a caller on stage directing the dancers.  Later in his career he removed the caller and added a male solo variation that is stunning.  The work is incredibly moving.  When we saw it performed, after the curtain fell, I could see that many of the people in the audience were misty.  While the steps are complex, the overall feel of the work is evocative of the spirit of Appalachian folk dancing.  You can see the rhythms of the dancers movements and the patterns of the clogging withing the ballet's choreography.  Unfortunately there are no public videos of Square Dance, so here is a clip of Pacific Northwest Ballet rehearsing the work to give an idea of what it is like.

One of Martha Graham's masterworks is Appalachian Spring.  This work draws more from the ideas of Americana as experienced through Appalachian culture, rather than directly through any folk lineage of dancing from the region.  The story told is a spring celebration of the American pioneers of the 1800s after building a new farmhouse. Among the central characters are a newlywed couple, a neighbor, a revivalist preacher and his followers.  Below is the first part of a four part recording of the work.