Grace and Chloe Interview – Clog
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Grace and Chloe interview (clog)
Laura Taylor - LT
Grace - G
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:20 [LT] Code two. This is Laura Taylor interviewing Grace and Chloe as part of the Dance Heritage Open Day at Dance City on the 23rd of February, 2025. So welcome to Dance City. Thank you very much for taking the time to bring along this subject today. Could you begin by telling us a little bit about what you've brought along today and what it means to you, please.
00:00:22:22 - 00:00:58:18 G: Yeah. So for my clogs and my Kingsmen Clog rosette, which are some of the things I wear when dancing as part of Kingsmen Clog, which is part of Newcastle Kingsmen, the rapper and clog side based here in Newcastle. Yeah, I dance clog with them and also get to play for the rapper side.
00:00:58:20 - 00:01:28:18 LT: And how old are they?
G: The dancers, or the objects?
LT: The objects. How old are the clogs.
G: The clogs? Oh, I don't know. They're actually some that have been lent to me. So, Yeah, I really don't know, sorry. And same with the rosette. Probably about the age of the team. I think I've been wearing them since about the 1970s or so.
00:01:28:20 - 00:02:00:22 LT: But that's really interesting to think that I - there's a provenance to the item that it's been perhaps handmade -
G: Yeah! I don’t know actually.
LT: - a long time ago and then passed down via this dance, the King- the Kings..?
G: Newcastle Kingsmen.
LT: Kingsmen, yes.
G: So the Newcastle Kingsmen have been around since the 60s or 70s. Like, they were instrumental in the revival of rapper dance as a dance form. And then Kingsmen Clog became as a thing, an official thing in like 2014 or 15 or so. Although I think there'd always been some women that would dance individually, clog with them sometimes, but they became an actual side, associated with Newcastle Kingsmen in the twenty-tens.
LT: So what does it entail being part of the group? Do you go out and perform? Is it sometimes impromptu?
G: Yeah! So we dance at a variety of things. We dance at festivals, across the summer and some earlier and later than the summer. We get booked for things, we get booked for paid things like weddings or, like events. We also go on and pub crawls, which is like the, the backbone of what- I mean, that's where rapper was supposed to be danced, is in a pub. In an indoor, small, space on wooden floors. So pub crawls are like the same with clog. Backbone of what we do, but we do lots of outdoor things now as well too.
LT: So for example, if you went to Hexham would you have like a route that you would do, established, or is it kind of just made up on any day, or?
G: It’s very much more impromptu. So we usually get like we're given a pub that we're starting at, and then we're go along to the next one and see. You have to ask, you have to do what's called ‘squaring’ a pub. So just 1 or 2 people go in to ask if we're allowed to dance, but then only when- if the pub says yes, can everyone come in. And then dance, and we buy drinks, obviously. And if we're allowed to, then we collect money in a hat.
LT: And do you find that there's always somebody who will come up and talk to you and say, you know, ‘oh, my auntie did that or my gran did that’. Or does it, you know, lead to lots of good conversations with people in the community.
G: Yeah, yeah. And people, yeah, they ask what it is. They say - more so with rapper than clog probably, but people do. People are interested with clog as well. Yeah.
LT: And so is it a thing that you would, suggest? It's great to be involved in for lots of different reasons. Kind of, you know.
G: Yeah, definitely. It's great. It's like. It's like a big family. But it's also like, it's fun, it’s good for your fitness. Yeah.
LT: And do you feel a connection with people in the past? You know, if you looked at sort of footage of people doing it, you know, in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, does it give you that kind of connection?
G: Yeah, it's nice to sometimes see an old dance that we get because- so Kingsmen Clog have some like self-written dances, which is also nice to get to dance things that the group has written together. Pre-me joining, I've only been in Kingsmen Clog for about a year, but, we also dance like some traditional notated dances, which have been around for- collected and then been around for years and years. So it's nice to see those being performed sometimes a long time ago in old footage, or more recently.
LT: What drew you? You say you've been doing it for maybe a year. What drew you to this style?
G: Yeah, I definitely came to Kingsmen Clog through Star and Shadow Rapper. There's quite a few dancers who crossover in the past and now. So, yeah, I came to clog through rapper, but, I'm sure there are people that have done the opposite. There's often lots of crossover between all three sort of groups.
LT: I guess there's an inevitability of people who are interested in heritage, interested in the styles. You join together-
G: You do a bit and then you say, ‘oh how can I do some more?’
LT: That's brilliant.
G: That's definitely what it was for me.
LT: Perfect. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Lovely to meet you. And thank you for bringing on the object today.