Stepping until your Socks Smoke: Clogging at the Phantom Taps Berlin

Clogging is an American Stepp Dance with Cues / New Class

„One, two, High Horse go… Slipping Vine … Rocking Chair …“. You can hear such picturesque names Wednesday evenings in Schöneberg when the Phantom Taps, www.phantom-taps.de, have their club evening. Clogging is not as much known in Germany as in the States but just as much loved. Berlin has a small bunch of enthusiastic dancers who look forward to meet once a week and practice their Cowboy, Grandpa and the like.

Accompanied by the clacks of metal-plated shoes, instructor Monika Ciupke cues the next steps to be danced. Once the step sequence has been practiced, music is added: Rock, Pop, Techno, Trance, Country, Irish … anything “that goes into your feet” can be used. Lately they practiced ”Poker Face“ of Lady GaGa.

You can see the pleasure in the dancers aged from 16 to 61. A wrong step? Ooops. No problem, next time it will surely work. Cloggers in Germany, do not participate in competitions, they only dance for the sake of entertainment. It is something like „friendship set to music”. They meet for conventions and special dances to learn new and practice other dances.

How does cueing work? Simple! The “basic“ repertoire of 11 movements is taught during a class. More complicated movements come with time and are a combination of the basic steps. All movements are set together to a choreograph matching the rhythm of the beat. Since you only have to learn the steps and the instructor cues you the choreography, new persons can easily join in dancing without great preparation: the basic steps are already known from other dances / songs. You do not need a partner to dance clogging; it might be danced in groups or seldom in formations.

So what are the requirements for clogging? They are only few: fun moving to music, a bit of a feeling for the beat and a minimum age of at least 12 years. A class takes about a half year and then you can continue with the Phantom Taps.

Coming up now at the turn of June to July, 30.06. - 01.07.2012, the Phantom Taps will be hosting ECTA’s 16^th Clog Convention in Carl-Zeiss-Oberschule, Barnetstr. 12-14, 12305 Berlin-Lichtenrade. Interested? Come over and take a look. And when you are there, then participate in the introduction from 9:15 a.m. in Hall 3 (Mensa) until 19:00. Afterwards join in the afterparty. Sunday morning the introduction continues at 9:30 a.m. until 12:45 p.m. Visit their homepage to download a flyer.

After this introduction the Phantom Taps will be offering a regular class after the convention. Please notice that the Phantom Taps regularly dance in Schöneberg Vorberstr. 1. Contact Monika Ciupke for any further questions via mciupke@web.de or any other board member as mentioned their homepage under www.phantom-taps.de.