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10 Cloggers Light Up Room At National Competition
It's no wonder they are the National Champions, they are awesome.
Eduardo Gaskell
04.06.21

What do you get when you blend different dance forms and percussive foot work with catchy beats and bright lights? The answer is Tap This!

They are a four-time national championship clogging team from Lincoln, Nebraska known for getting audiences on their feet with high energy performances that will leave you, the viewer, huffing and puffing.

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The fourteen member group has traveled the country performing on stages in front of thousands of people for five years.

Videos of their amazing dances are all over the internet. It was no different during the Clogging Champions of America – Showdown of Champions.

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Tap This! stole the show once more with such a jaw dropping performance they were named Overall National Champion Senior Team. Dressed in striking black and red outfits with matching white shoes, they take the stage amidst loud cheers of an already excited audience.

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Now there’s a reason clog dances are only around a minute or so. These guys and girls are burning through an insane amount of energy once the music starts. There’s no slowing down, no pauses, or slow movements in their routines.

Like race horses waiting for the gates to open. You’d have to have crazy strong lungs to clog dance!

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Central Home describes the dance as follows,

“Clogging is a dance style that is accentuated by the type of shoes that are worn during the dance. The shoes are used to make a loud percussion noise with the toe or heel or in some cases both the toe and heel to make a rhythm. This rhythm or beat is often compared to the sounds that percussion instruments make and is the basis of clogging.”

Clogging is the official state dance of both North Carolina and Kentucky.

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So think of it as beatboxing but with your feet. Except Tap This! mixes clogging with hip-hop, funk, and pop for a little more flair. The audience loves them for that!

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But clog dancing was born of English tradition.

Workers in mills were required to wear hard-soled shoes. They would tap their feet to keep warm during working sessions. During lunch period and after work, they would have unofficial competitions to see who had the best sounding percussion beats and rhythms.

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This team took it to a whole new level though. If those English workers could see what Tap This! have done with clog, they’d be so jealous. Tap This! just adds a whole new layer of cool to clog dancing.

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Just look at the way they transition to different movements and formations all while kicking and striking the floor to the beat. It’s amazing how they can remember all those moves with that tempo.

Your eyes take over while they’re dancing but watch it again and you’ll notice the audience shouting and cheering from start to finish. The final pose kills the music, and Tap This! just absorbs all the love from that audience. They’re used to it!

Check out this incredible clog dance below!

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