Come Clog Dancing: Treasures of English Folk Dance

In the last decades of the 19th century, at the height of the Industrial Revolution,

there was a dance, now rarely seen, that resounded through

the collieries and pit villages of the North East. Clog dance.

For Charles Hazlewood, a conductor and musician, clog dance has recently become an obsession.

I first saw clog dancing in this very barn and I was completely entranced.

The sound of a wooden sole and a wooden heel

on the floor and these beautiful little sort of shuffles

and clicks and clacks, this is a new music for me and I thought,

"My God, I want more of this!"

Clog dance has all but died out in the North East.

-Have any of you ever seen clog dancing before.

-No.

Does any of you even know what clog dancing is?

Now Charles plans to put it firmly back on the map.

If I said to you that you will all be dancing exactly like that by the end of tonight, I would be lying.

Charles wants to stage the largest mass clog dance this country has ever seen.

Here is to Flash Mob Clog Dance!

CHEERING

He's going to be helped by a team of local enthusiasts led by expert clog dancer, Laura Connolly.

The traditions of clog dancing are really important.

In other countries their culture is singing and dancing and that

is natural to them, and it seems in our country we shy away from it.

I think it would be really good to get it back.

We're going to rekindle the spirit, that great ancient spirit which is clog dancing.

Charles is on his way to the North East.

He's done some ground work and now has two weeks to stage his mass clog dance.

I'm really excited about these next two weeks.

It seems to me that something magical could happen.

I'm just hoping to find lots of open hearted and free spirited people

who want to give this thing a go.

Maybe we'll give birth to a whole new generation of clog dancers.

Clog dance can be traced back to the Middle Ages,

but the dance that we know today took shape during the Industrial Revolution

when the clog was standard footwear for millions of workers all over Britain.

Some claim the modern dance originated in the mills of Lancashire

as clog wearing workers tapped out the rhythms of the looms.

But by the mid 1800s clog dancing had spread to the mining communities of the North East.

This was the pitman's dance made up and performed

at home or in the pub, cheap entertainment for working families.

The dancers, almost always men, would usually perform solo

either unaccompanied or to a fiddle or pipe.

From such humble origins clog dance produced some stars.

Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel were both clog dancers.

But the most famous was Dan Leno, probably the most popular

Music Hall entertainer of the 1880s

and a clog dance champion.

It's Charles' mission to breathe new life into this great tradition

and his first port of call is a dance studio in central Newcastle.

Today, Charles' creative team is meeting for the very first time.

What keys do you play the pipes in?

-G major, D major...

-F?

..so it's slightly... And F.

Lee Proud and Nicki Belsher will be in charge of choreography,

and it's going to be Laura's job to teach everybody how to dance.

Clog dancing is a special kind of dancing for me

because of the rhythms.

If I put my clogs on I'll dance in front of the whole world

and it wouldn't bother me, whereas if you ask me to do something else

I'd be quite shy about it so it totally brings me out of myself.

It's kind of like my brains are in my feet, that's my best area.

Laura has been clog dancing for 16 years and represents the contemporary form.

As part of a live act the Demon Barber Road Show, she performs all over the country.

Here, Laura is demonstrating two different types of dance, a reel and a jig.

Other types of dance will be Horn Pipe or Waltz.

Like most cloggers from the North East, Laura dances on the balls

of her feet putting her heel down only to make a tap.

Someone trained in Lancashire clog, the other main English tradition,

would have a more flat-footed style.

Wow, that's amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing.

So my first question to you is how feasible it would be

to teach any part of that to a large group of people?

The first step would probably be OK, that one...

That would be a tricky bit perhaps, but I would probably do something like...

-So the action is still the same visually...

-Yes.

-But they're not having to make the triplets.

-Yeah, that makes sense, Yeah, great.

The hardest part was the beginning bit -

it was like a double tap. Do the very first pattern.

That's quite... That looks quite tricky.

THEY LAUGH

I just want to start off by telling you a little bit why I'm here.

I've been fascinated by clog dancing for a long time, and if I get my ambition, if I get to realise

my ambition it's to get hundreds of people in Monument Square in Newcastle

to do some fantastic, effectively formation clog dancing.

How will that sound when you've got hundreds of people clogging in a big concrete space?

Also, talking to you two particularly as great choreographers,

how feasible is it to create something which is almost like a promenade performance

where people are meandering around, they're not quite sure, they've heard something's going to happen,

and suddenly they're ambushed by something immense which happens that everyone just suddenly goes...

I'd love it if I found myself in the middle of this cacophony

of rhythm and music.

You can have people wandering round that look like they're

just having a fabulous time, having a coffee, sitting near Pret

-that can suddenly stand up and...

-I think that's great!

It's happening all around us which is scary for the audience cos they'll think they have to join in.

That's the brilliance because it's the element of surprise.

If you think about having mannequins in a shop window who are real humans

and then all of a sudden they start clogging in the shop windows.

There's no escape from this. It's like a clog twilight zone.

I'm just delighted. It's scary and risky

when you first put a bunch of people together, especially people you haven't worked with before,

you don't know... The chemistry could be all wrong.

The chemistry only has to be very slightly wrong and the whole thing is doomed from the start.

I must say every person in that room has got something really valid and big hearted

and sophisticated in a way but also very grounded to offer.

I'm about a size nine, do you reckon?

For her day job, Laura teaches clog dance to

primary school children and today Charles is going back to school.

So is this your first time of putting clogs on?

-Absolutely my first time I'm...

-That's exciting.

-I'm totally a clog virgin, yeah.

-OK.

-Wow!

-Do they feel all right, a bit strange?

-Yeah, it's a bit strange.

-You feel like you might slip over any minute.

-Yeah.

At the heart of every clog dance there are a small number of very basic foot moves.

-So you've got taps.

-Yeah.

There's heel taps, clicking the heels together.

The main one you'll use is the shuffle, the forward and back movement.

Up here in the North East we do a shuffle called a rounded shuffle,

so you go out and then into straight if you were to dance...

-Oh, yeah.

-It just looks nicer doing the rounded shuffles.

So they're sort of your sort of basic moves and then they just get put together to make a step.

So, a nice easy one to start with and you've got a toe behind...

And then a little hop and a heel in front...

A step is a series of foot taps that usually lasts for eight bars of music or about 15 seconds.

The classic clog steps have plain descriptive names

like cross-the-buckle or back jumps.

And one, two, three, four.

Then what we have to do, this is the tricky bit, is change feet.

So you're going there for your first one.

Traditionally, steps weren't written down but were passed on from teacher to pupil.

Dancers would learn a repertoire of steps and when performing, string some together to create the dance.

And then you've got a break and it's usually something that looks quite different.

Out, cross, out together, out together and click. You go out.

'It's wonderful. She's such a good teacher, she just so totally encourages you to zone in.

'I was sort of in my feet if you see what I mean.'

Which is a curious place for me to be. I don't spend much time in my feet.

'It's so lovely because there's entry points, you know, for someone like me, at my age.

'I can make a step sound and look vaguely valid quite quickly.'

-And click.

-Very good. That was really fast learning.

'I'm delighted.'

We can definitely get lots and lots of people who've never done it before

to do this and to do it in a way that they can feel totally...

valuable, valid... Authentic.

While Laura and the rest of the team work on the routine.

Charles takes to the streets of Newcastle.

I want to get to the bottom of what people here know about clog dancing.

Do people have a sense that it's an important part of their heritage?

Do people know how much clogs were used in heavy industry?

Does anyone know anything about clogs at all?

-Do you know what clog dancing is?

-I would associate that with Holland - Dutch.

-Do you know it's an important part of North Eastern heritage?

-No, definitely not.

-I thought that was a clog.

-Right, those are Crocs.

-Crocs! That's right.

Would you fancy having a go with it? SHE LAUGHS

Me, clog dancing, at my age?

-Yeah.

-No, I've got a bad back, man.

The problem with clogs is you cannot really fasten them on.

You seem to like slip out of them.

Ah, the clogs you get here are laced up and they're like normal shoes.

Well, then they're not clogs then.

Oh, they are cos they've got wooden soles, you see.

If you put in something and you fasten it, it's a shoe. Right?

Now flip flops, right...

If flip flops had laces would they be flip flops?

You must be, you must be... inexorable logic. I thank you.

I'm feeling a bit deflated, you know.

People just haven't got a clue what it is, why it's important, where it comes from.

And I've got one bloke arguing semantics with me.

If I can just kind of push people through that very small little pain barrier

that they've perceived and get them to put some clogs on, I think it will make people feel great.

People are only too happy to play football because they know what that is.

No-one knows what clog dancing is and it can be every bit as fulfilling,

exciting, inspiring, fizzy as playing football, rugby or any other team activity.

Before he starts pulling people together to rehearse them,

Charlie wants to understand more about clog dance and

the mining communities where it flourished.

Half way between Durham and Newcastle sits Beamish,

a living museum which provides a vivid portrait of colliery life.

At the start of the 20th century, the Durham and Northumberland Coalfield

employed nearly 250,000 men and boys in about 400 pits,

carving out roughly 56 million tons of coal every year.

For the miners and their families life was hard.

Cheap housing clustered around the mine heads,

tiny cottages, often sleeping 12 to a room,

complete with only the most basic outdoor sanitation.

This is apparently called the ash closet or the ash netty.

It's pretty obvious...

what goes on in there.

Among mining communities everyone wore clogs.

They were hard wearing, easy to mend and costing about three shillings

in 1900, they were the cheapest footwear available.

I don't know whether this is of any interest to you,

-we've actually got an original clog look.

-Oh, look at that!

Complete with its original metal horseshoe type thing.

Yes, it would have been made in the same way as a horseshoe, nailed on.

In a mine like this you probably wouldn't have been allowed to have

this metal on because it could have been struck against

metal or stone underground and caused a spark,

which could ignite gas underground. So a lot of the mines in this area

would have to remove the metal and they'd just be walking on the wood,

which would mean the boots wore down a lot quicker but you'd just have to repair them.

Often working for 12 hours a day, six days a week,

miners toiled in cramped, damp, dark conditions.

They were paid only for the coal they produced,

and colliery demands could run to six tons of coal per miner, per day.

It was back-breaking work and dangerous.

When there was roof collapse would it have always be because of human error, that they hadn't

propped efficiently, or was it a complete lottery - you could get collapse at any point?

It was a complete lottery. The rock has natural faults in it

and you can never tell where the faults are.

You might have put your props in exactly as they should have been but if you get a huge fault in the rock

there's not much you can do about it, it will just collapse. So it was a common occurrence.

In 1913 there was an injury in British coalmines every five minutes.

You got things like rock falls.

They're using gunpowder to blast the coal out. That was dangerous.

You had gas down the mine, there was always a risk of gas explosions.

And because they're working with coal, coal dust is highly flammable.

So if the coal dust caught into a flame then it could ignite as well.

There was so many dangers underground, it was a really dangerous job.

I found that really interesting.

I already had a very strong sense, as anyone does, of the sheer hardship of coalmining

but to actually go into that drift mine,

stooped and kind of cramped into the bowels of the earth...

And the idea of spending hour upon hour in there,

labouring, toiling, on your own, not even in the companionship of others.

It's very moving and it does make me think once again that clog dancing

must have been like a kind of a blessed relief, like a fantastic...

..sherbet centre to life, because what else was there?

The 1880s and the 1890s, when the British collieries were booming,

was the golden age of clog dance.

Music Hall artists incorporated clog dance into their acts

and took it up and down the country.

National competitions started. Dancers gathering from all counties to compete for championship belts.

There was sometimes so many entrants, competitions lasted seven days.

In the Durham area, one woman has done more than any other to keep the spirit of those times alive.

So today, Laura has brought Charles to Langley Moore to see Brenda Walker.

For over 30 years Brenda has been teaching clog dance.

She teaches a strict local style of clog dance that dates back to the golden age of clog.

Arms by the side, head immobile, little or no expression.

The one difference is that now, the dancers are all women.

Wow! That's amazing, absolutely amazing!

-Wow, are you Brenda?

-Yes, I am.

I'm Charles, it's very nice to meet you.

-And you.

-Have you met Laura?

-Yes, Brenda and I have already met.

-Yes, I know Laura.

That's just incredible, I haven't seen such a comprehensive display en masse.

I've seen Laura doing amazing things... So I'm flabbergasted.

Well, Brenda, we're here because we're trying

to organise a kind of clog dancing massive in Newcastle city centre.

And you're one of the great scions of the art of the traditional

clog dancing here, so I mean I'm hoping that we can grab you

and all these fantastic women you're working with and indeed

-anyone else who's in the building at the moment.

-Yes.

-Would they all be up for joining in?

-Absolutely. We have got

tap dancers as well at the school and hopefully they'll join us as well.

As well as preserving the local style of dance,

Brenda teaches traditional local steps.

These steps can be traced all the way back to the 1890s

from three generations of a single mining family.

Jim Elwood, shown here with his family, was a local miner who

became the pitman's clog dancing champion of Northumberland and Durham in 1896.

Jim, taught his steps to his son Johnson, who in turn handed them on to his daughter Mary.

And it was Mary who taught Brenda the Elwood steps over 30 years ago.

When I first started to learn, I used to go to Mary's

and I would be hanging onto her kitchen sink on a little board.

The budgie would be there coughing cos Mary was a heavy smoker,

but she was very inspiring, you know, to see her dancing.

She didn't do a lot of dancing

but when she did, her steps, they were lovely.

She would show me a step - mind, not on every visit,

and it was like gold when I got a new step from her,

and I would just write them down in a very basic way.

In a way, preserving the Elwood tradition, the Elwood steps, has been a life project for you.

It has. I love the style. It's elegant.

It just sounds good. It's light and it's just lovely to watch.

I believe in keeping things as they should be,

and feel we're lucky enough to have them, we're lucky enough to...

because in other parts of the country, some people have died off,

taking their steps with them, and where have they gone?

Nobody knows what they were, there's no record.

Some of my girls have said, "I don't know whether I'm sure

"about doing this the way that you're doing it",

and I've explained to them, it's a fun thing,

so there is very strong feeling still about the traditions, not just me.

I mean, my approach to situations of this sort,

to kind of endeavours of this sort,

it's a bit like if you paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa

or you staged Beethoven's Fidelio underneath the Los Angeles highway,

at best that will be a kind of very thought provoking and interesting experience

which might lead you to other thoughts, which might take you to new places.

The one thing it will not do will be to take anything away from either the Mona Lisa or Fidelio.

-These remain supreme works of art, do you see what I mean?

-Absolutely.

By the same token, whatever our jamboree ends up being,

it won't take away one molecule from what clogging actually is.

No, I don't so. I think it'll be wonderful, I do honestly.

I'm not adverse to experimenting and everything,

as long as the traditional steps are kept safe.

I think tradition's really important.

As a conductor, I would not be doing my job properly

if I didn't read every last piece of information,

if I didn't listen to every last performance,

if I didn't immerse myself in everything that we know or can possible know

about, let's say, the way appropriately to perform a trill in a particular phrase of Bach.

But you have to make your own choices about what parts of that tradition you utilise

and what parts of that tradition you leave behind.

Art of any sort mutates and morphs and develops and changes over time

and that's nothing to be frightened of, that's what naturally happens.

It is like Chinese whispers that things just, you know, go like that.

But that doesn't for a minute mean

you don't have to keep reacquainting yourself with the source,

keep doing that and then go off on your adventures again, come back, go off on another adventure.

Tradition is where home is

but if you only stay at home, you have a fairly narrow life.

Charles has recruited Brenda and her girls and rehearsals start tomorrow.

But first, there's one other miners' dance Charles wants to understand, and that's rapper.

Clog and rapper both came of age during the Industrial Revolution

and they share many foot moves in common.

But while clog was the humble dance for the home or pit,

rapper was a performance dance often linked to morris dancing.

Two comic characters, Tommy and Betty, a man in drag,

would provide a running commentary on the action and tell jokes.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS

Like clog, rapper has been kept alive throughout the 20th century by small groups of enthusiasts.

Tonight, Charles has come to the Cumberland Arms in Byker.

It's folk night, but for once, he isn't interested in the music.

Charles has heard tell of a local rapper group

called The Newcastle Kingsmen, who train and perform here once a week.

MEN SHOUT OUT

The Kingsmen were founded back in 1949 at King's College in Newcastle by a professor of civil engineering.

The group still preserves strong links with the university,

and regular recruits from students and graduates ensure the Kingsmen are still going strong 60 years on.

MAN CALLS OUT

That was amazing.

What an extraordinary virtuoso display.

The precision to it, not just in terms of your amazing footwork

but also, anyone puts a hand wrong and someone will get cut.

-Occasionally.

-I've been scraped in once a while,

-but the blades aren't sharp.

-Still be quite nasty, wouldn't it?

It would be very nasty.

You're making light of it!

When you were whirling round and round and round, you were like a blur.

It felt like we were all going to be sucked into your vortex at any moment, actually, but interestingly,

-whilst the steps looked similar to clog-dancing steps...

-Yes.

..you've got normal leather shoes on.

What the coal miners used to do is go out in their Sunday best.

Clogs would be unflexible enough to do that speed in

and sometimes they're a bit dangerous.

You don't talk to Health and Safety about your work, do you?

-No.

-Thank goodness for that.

Charles has met the professionals.

Now it's time to start work with the amateurs.

140 men and women have signed up for his mass clog dance

and Charles is going to rehearse them in small groups.

So the first thing you need is a pair of clogs and we have various bags there, all shapes, all sizes of foot.

There are clogs for you.

Tonight, Charles and Laura are in Sunderland

where 15 students and staff from the university have gathered at the North Shore nightclub.

They feel weird, they feel hard, and they're curved at the front

so you want to move about and dance in them. It's weird, you know.

Determined to get things off to a good start, Laura has drafted in two of her clog dance friends.

This is Tiny and Fiona. They are like the queens of clogging.

Before we go any further, I'm hoping they're going to show us

some amazing little thing just to get our mouths watering.

Wow! Hoh-hoh!

If I said to you that you will all be dancing exactly like that by the end of tonight, I would be lying,

but there's a great deal that we can do

which everyone will be able to get their feet around.

We're going to start off by learning the first step.

-Yep.

-OK?

-So, your first step, it's got a little reminder.

It's called the Pink Panther step, because it goes...

-TO TUNE OF PINK PANTHER THEME:

-..da-da, da-da...is your rhythm.

Laura and the team has devised four basic steps for everyone to learn.

The drop step isn't actually a clog step at all,

but Charles and Laura are going to use it to march the dancers from place to place.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and stop, fantastic.

The grapevine is a traditional Yorkshire step

but it's normally danced at least three times this speed.

Click, and then we're going to go back the other way,

so, right, left in front, right and click, heel, step.

Swannie heel is the oldest step of the four, and also the hardest to master.

Heel, step, one more, left, heel, step.

OK, stop there.

Step, heel, step.

'Um, I'm not very co-ordinated.'

For certain things I'm OK,

but it's very, very different

to going out dancing in a club cos it's not what you're used to,

but once you do it time and time again and you watch everybody

and they're all doing the same thing, then it gets easier and easier as it goes along.

The shoe's hard to get used to, with it having a curve in it,

and sometimes you feel like you're going to fall

but it was good and challenging, but it's good to learn something new.

What you need to do now is decide which step you particularly like of the four that you've learnt,

and we'll say that the Pink Panther is here, so drop step is here.

Then grapevine here, and finally the old swannie, OK.

Are we ready?

One, two, three, four.

Yep...

One, two, three...

If Charles' clog dance is to have impact, the dancers must stay perfectly in synch.

Just one person out of time and the whole effect will be ruined.

Over here, keep going.

OK...

After four, we're going to stop. Two, three, four and stop.

Even more crucial are the moments when they stop dancing all together.

After four - one, two, three, four.

Everybody, one, two, three, four.

OK, and stop.

Excellent! Well done.

That was really exciting.

I didn't think it would actually be this fun, but wahey, once you get stuck into it, it's brilliant.

You've got all the clogs hitting the floor at the same time, there's this constant beat

and the energy is just, wow!

It just fills the room and it's an amazing feeling.

I just said to my friend we should start doing it from now on

cos it's really fun and you get to make a loud noise as well, which is always good.

When Charles' dancers take to the streets in seven days' time, they're going to clog in a flash-mob style.

That means they will surprise the people of Newcastle with what seems like an impromptu performance

and the location Charles has chosen is Grey's Monument.

-It's nice that there's several entry points to it.

-Yes.

-We could also have charging armies of cloggers coming in from various directions.

-Yeah.

Erected in 1838 to the social reformer Charles Grey,

Grey's Monument is a landmark in the Newcastle landscape.

More importantly for Charles, it sits at the heart of the city's shopping district.

This is one of Newcastle's busiest public spaces.

It would be amazing to have a whole hoard of cloggers coming up that hill,

-or maybe up that one.

-Yep.

It's full of possibility, and hopefully it won't even be raining.

Although Charles's flash mob will be firmly based on traditional dance,

he's keen to mix things up a bit.

This is the drums, here.

OK.

HOLLOW RINGING

Usually for chemicals but not usually for dancing.

Oh, they're going to be absolutely brilliant.

In the past, clog dancers would often perform on top of beer barrels.

Now Charles has decided to give that idea a modern twist.

All he needs are some dancers.

So, there we have three oil drums and three clog dancers.

-Are you ready?

-Yep.

Elegantly done.

This is so exciting.

Can I just say, I'm really scared.

-What can we do to make you feel safe?

-Can I have another hand in here?

-Yeah, I'll come in there.

-Yeah, you come in there.

-One, two, three, four.

Clogs are slippy at the best of times, and on these oil drums, Laura has every reason to feel nervous.

That was amazing. That was absolutely amazing.

Although rehearsals are now in full swing, Charles is taking a day out.

He's come to Criccieth in North Wales

to collect his own pair of clogs from Trefor Owen,

one of the last remaining clog-makers in the UK.

Trefor has been hand-crafting clogs for the last three decades.

He uses traditional techniques handed down from craftsmen to pupil over generations.

Even his tools date back to the 1840s.

-You must be Trefor.

-That's right, I'm Trefor.

-Hi, great to see you.

-And you.

You're already at it at this early hour.

Self-employment.

What sort of wood is this?

Predominantly sycamore,

and that's because probably 80% of what I make is for dancers.

-Sycamore's a better wood.

-Because?

Clarity of sound - tap more than clunk.

-Crucial.

-Oh, so it's quite a clean surface.

-Yeah.

-OK. So, you've got a hunk of wood, and then you cut it.

-Is this a rough shape?

-That's blocked out.

From that, you go on to these old hand tools. Hook goes into the iron.

What that gives you is immense leverage powers.

It's not muscle. It's physics.

From the blank, you're going down and you're cutting in.

I'll give you a suggestion. You're learning the dancing and to learn something

about how these are made in the first place?

-For sure, yeah.

-Have a go yourself.

-Absolutely, love to, yeah.

-Take your left hand.

-Grab that, left foot on the bench.

-You were like that, weren't you?

It's quite a long stretch.

It'll feel very strange.

I'm doing tiny shavings. You seemed to be able to get...

Shavings are good. It's all right. You need to put it slightly twisted.

-Ah, yeah.

-That's it. You get a much bigger one then.

-Yeah, so it's more like that.

-That's better, yeah. And that should come loose.

-There you go.

-Look at that!

-Excellent! You're hired!

I'm hired. I'm the apprentice you've been waiting for, aren't I?

Hard-wearing, durable and easily repaired, the clog was the perfect labourer's footwear.

In 1901 there were more than 6,000 clog-makers in England and Wales,

producing hundreds of thousands of pairs of clogs every single year.

But in the second half of the 20th century, clog-making went into an inexorable decline.

One of the things that happened is that around the 1930s,

around the big slump, you got a stigma of clogs were associated with poverty.

If you were unemployed in the back end of the workhouse era,

you were actually issued clogs if you were in the workhouse.

If you were lucky, they fitted you.

You got this stigma built up.

When I started, which was 1978, just in the area I was living in,

in South Yorkshire, I could count over 100 clog-makers.

That was just in my local area.

-In the late '70s?

-'78, when I started the business.

Now, if you collect everybody with any association to the clog trade at all,

you can just get 17 in the whole UK.

So steel, glass, chemicals, shipbuilding, coal,

all the old heavy industries, they were the core market of the old clog-makers.

I came through it from the dance, and I suppose I'm part of a generation

that was one of the blips of the dance revival in the '70s.

If I was reliant on making working clogs, I'd have gone out of business as well.

We do do working clogs here. We do local farmers' clogs.

We still have some very small industrial contracts, but 75, 80% is dance.

It takes Trevor two hours to carve a pair of clog soles.

This is going to swing round. This is going to drop down, OK?

Next, he cuts, shapes and attaches the leather upper.

You'll present it to the sole, you'll make sure it fits where you need it to fit.

Are these the ones for me?

-This is hopefully the pair that should fit you.

-Beautiful.

-Should be a stool appeared behind you, as if my magic.

-Right, great.

-Off with the filthy modern DM.

-Everything has its place.

They want to be quite snug, don't they?

They should be a close fit without cutting off the circulation.

That's exactly what they are.

Ah, they feel absolutely amazing.

Thank you so much. I'll wear them for evermore.

For the last week, Charles and his team have been training 140 amateur dancers in small groups.

Now, with two days to go, they're coming together for the very first time.

I'm so excited. What can you hear?

TRAMP OF CLOGS

The distant sound of lots of people clogging.

This is the first full rehearsal.

I mean, we won't have everyone tonight,

but I think we might have a third to a half, which is fantastic.

This is when the project gets really good.

Hello!

Good evening. It's so great to see you all here.

The purpose of this evening's session is to try and start instilling in all of us

what the basic building blocks, what the structure of our little show is going to be.

The performance will begin with the different groups of dancers all converging on Monument Square.

What I've got Nicki doing is establishing which group is going to come from where,

this flash-mob element that we've got a group coming up the Metro steps

and other people having a coffee, they're joining in.

People coming from different locations, seemingly at random.

That's where we've got to.

So, you lot will go up the furthest and round the outside.

This lot will come in behind Laura's group,

and then this group will go in-between those groups.

It will all make sense in the end, I promise you.

We're going to go for the top of the show.

In the order that Nicki's told you, gradually each group makes its way into the space.

OK, let's give that a try and see how it goes.

The flash mob are going to assemble while Laura and her friends

are performing a dance from the 1920s called Mrs Willis's Rag.

Once everyone has come together, Charles has a plan for what he hopes

will be the first great dramatic moment of the flash mob.

Guys, listen to me now.

I want to show you how you're going to know when to freeze.

When everyone is on, these guys are still dancing away at the front

and then they're going to do a sign - for the last four bars,

their arms are up like that and then they stop and you stop and there is complete silence.

OK? Are we ready?

One, two, three, four.

Charles's team have been trained to instil in all the dancers a sense of shared rhythm.

Now they will find out if they have succeeded or not.

Yes!

Hearing the rhythm of the clogs

-is really good.

-You could hear it...

I knew where you had to come

cos I could hear the stamp in the entrance hall.

You know, it was so many people who haven't danced.

-It's good to see a mix of ages as well.

-Oh, yes.

I thought, "I'm going to be like an old granny when I come",

but I'm not.

I think moving along in chorus when we're all sort of

stepping at the same time,

it's a strong picture, a very strong sound.

They're some of my favourite bits in the entire piece,

and when the professional girls are dancing all in synch, it's fantastic.

The sounds they're making and the way they're moving is great.

I'm curious about Saturday.

I think it'll be a little bit mad but it should be fun.

His cloggers have all left, but for Charles, the evening isn't over.

-Can you do that?

-I'm definitely up for trying.

-Excellent, excellent.

Um, pah, um, pah...

Charles has planned his mass clog dance to contain moments for special features.

Newcastle Kingsmen will provide one, Brenda Walker's dancers another

and Charles has now decided to use some of the steps he's learnt to dance a solo.

-Oh!

-At the 11th hour! At the last hurdle.

-So close, so close.

-Then...?

Then there's a little break, which looks quite different to this step.

So I thought for you, it could go something like, um...

-Dum-pah-bum, dum-pah-bum.

-Da-dah, click, click.

Dum-pah-bum...

-An elephant!

-You're doing two feet.

Put your leg there.

And leave it there. Yeah, yeah.

This kick that Charles is struggling with was made famous by Charlie Chaplin.

-More like that?

-It was the signature move of his character, the Little Tramp.

Yes!

So it's this way - dum-bah-dum, dum-bah-dum, ah, ah.

Yes. Exactly.

'I think it's important that I do this,

'however much my tired old body doesn't feel like it's set up for it, because...'

all these people, all these fantastic people who've committed to this,

virtually all of them have never done it before.

In fact, an awful lot of them wouldn't have seen the point in doing it

if we hadn't kind of, you know, pushed them so hard to take part.

Now they're on and they're really on it.

I think it would be not just inappropriate but mean of me

not to put myself out there as well.

-Ah! It's that voice that says, "No, you can't! No, you can't!"

-You can.

Yes, you can! One more, please, Laura.

One, two, three, four...

In the early years of the 20th century, clog dance all but died out.

Music hall was on the wane, and tap, a more flamboyant dance,

making full use of the upper body, made clog seem old-fashioned.

But as old traditions were fading away, folk revivalists,

led by the newly formed English Folk Dance and Song Society, determined to keep the traditions alive.

In this revival period, one person was the face of clog dance.

Local boy Jackie Toaduff.

Jackie is Laura's hero, and now with the big event just around the corner,

she wants to show Charles why Jackie Toaduff is so special.

-Come on in.

-Thank you very much.

This is the film that I watched when I was doing my final performance on the degree course,

and I discovered this brilliant video,

and was mesmerised and had to learn it immediately, so let's pop it in.

Here, Jackie's dancing at the Royal Albert Hall in 1964,

a venue he performed at no less than 18 times.

Throughout the 1950s,

Jackie represented English folk dance in festivals across Europe.

He danced with Princess Margaret on two separate occasions

and took clog dance around the globe,

hobnobbing with movie stars and politicians.

He's just got such elation going through him. Velvet britches.

Yep.

So he changes from hornpipe to reel just with a few stamps.

There he goes.

-Up tempo. Woo!

-Great, isn't it?

-Real hoedown now.

-Yeah.

I love that the audience are clapping before he's even finished.

Absolutely, and this is in dry old London.

APPLAUSE

Although she admired him when she was a student,

Laura actually met Jackie for the first time just six months ago.

Jackie is... he's my biggest influence, my hero.

A little bit like when girls would swoon at George Clooney,

I swoon at Jackie Toaduff.

He's such a dapper man.

I just thought I want to dance like him.

So probably my main influence, really.

He was exciting, as you know, I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Jackie has long since hung up his clogs.

Now aged 77, he lives in happy retirement in a hotel in Dronfield, in Derbyshire.

-Here he is.

-Hello.

-Hello, Jackie.

-How are you doing?

-Very good, thank you.

-I remember you.

-Nice to see you.

-Laura and Charles want their project

to get the approval of the last great clog dancer.

I started off my dancing days as a tap-dancer,

but as soon as I heard the rhythms of the clog dance,

I fell in love with clog dancing.

So you started out as a tap-dancer.

Yes, I did, from the age of six, having secret tap-dancing lessons, because I was a coal miner's son.

So your parents were very opposed.

Very much so.

My future, as far as they were concerned, was as a coal miner.

Like my father was and like my brothers.

I had to be a coal miner like everybody else, and dancing of any kind, really, was for girls.

When I insisted on dancing, my mother used to say,

"Oh, no, he's at it again - wants to learn to dance.

"Should have been a girl, you know. Definitely should have been a girl."

Then I became a coal miner.

When I was 14-years-old, I went down the coal mine, and I worked down there for 12 years.

I left the pit when I was 26 years old,

and my first engagement was a season in Jersey, in the Channel Islands,

and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven,

because coming out of that coal mine

and realising I hadn't to go down that black hole again

was magic to me.

It was, as I say,

from black-and-white into glorious Technicolor.

Jackie left the pits far behind and now rarely returns to County Durham.

-You should come up.

-Come up.

-Yeah.

Not that I can dance now.

No, no, you don't have to do any dancing,

but you might find it so infectious that you want to join in, you never know.

-Thanks a lot, Jackie.

-Thank you.

-See you at the weekend.

-That's it!

-See you there.

Hey - pinching my steps again!

Today, the people of central Newcastle

will witness an unprecedented event in the history of the Northeast.

For the first time, all of Charles's flash mob cloggers are gathering together.

140 men and women from across the Northeast,

about to launch a huge surprise on Newcastle's Saturday shoppers.

Bit nervous,

but I'm sure it'll be all right once we get up there.

Ready. Ready for it.

I'm looking forward to doing it.

I'm just excited to do it and get out and see people's faces!

Charles's clog dance will last about four minutes.

First, a mass dance will draw in the crowd.

Then there will be a series of feature moments, from Brenda Walker, the Kingsmen and others.

Finally, everyone will disappear back into the crowd, as though they had never been there.

OK, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just so, so delighted, utterly delighted,

that each and every one of you has decided to throw yourselves behind this quixotic mission -

a mission to reignite people with the great spirit of clog dancing.

Here is to Flash Mob Clog Dance!

CHEERING

MUSIC PLAYS

CHEERING

MEN: Hey!

That was amazing. It was so much fun. I loved every single minute of it.

-Absolutely fantastic.

-Brilliant.

I can still feel the drum roll in my head.

It was just such a great atmosphere.

The amount of people that gathered round was unbelievable.

I don't think we expected the response we were going to get.

I could see so many phones, everyone got their phones out,

and they were recording it to show their friends.

I could hear people walking past going, "I want to do that."

So, I think everyone liked it.

I think I'm going to try and find a clog-dancing class, it's as simple as that.

I absolutely love it. I'm addicted now. Addicted to clogging.

-Get your clogs on!

-Get your clogs on and go clog dancing.

You dark horse!

I found it so wonderful and inspiring, and I think everybody should dance after that.

But it really brought tears to my eyes.

It was so thrilling.

I want to do it again now.

Going to start all over again.

What I hope we've achieved today is that however many hundred people came to watch

now know that clog dancing isn't a boring folk tradition.

I would hope that people could see all of our lot having such a good time,

and it's our tradition and we could be proud of it.

We all entered into the mad spirit of a mad endeavour, and people just threw themselves at it.

There couldn't have been more commitment from anybody, as far as I could see.

Every last person giving it their absolute all, their pores were oozing rhythm.

It was loud, it was proud, it was brash, and it had enormous heart.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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