Welsh clog dancing

What it is

Clogging means more than putting on a pair of clogs and moving about. A dancer uses the toe, the heel and the sides of the wooden soles to make sounds, some loud and some soft, in patterns and rhythms. Both feet work together. The trick is control: the same shoe that stamps can also tap lightly. Dancers can perform on wood or on slate, the flat stone once cut in the quarries. They may dance to Welsh traditional music, or with no accompaniment at all. Some wear traditional Welsh costume; many do not.

Tricks and style

Welsh clog dancing keeps a set of stunts that give it its own character, and dancers think up new ones all the time. A dancer may put out a candle flame with the edge of a wooden sole, or spring over a broom. Toby stepping drives the feet forward while the dancer stays in a squat, in a way seen in Cossack dancing. Straddle jumps and handkerchief jumps take the dancer high into the air. Routines often carry a handkerchief, a broom and a candle. Steps have names, though the names can differ from one dancer or one district to the next.

Origins and history

The wooden shoe itself is usually credited to Flemish weavers who settled in the British Isles in the 1200s, though the Welsh clog as it is known now, with a leather upper, belongs to the industrial age. That trade grew around slate, and clog dancing grew with it: quarrymen and farmers danced in their working shoes, on breaks, at fairs and in stable lofts and taverns, and the best of them went home with the prize. A film from 1959 records Porthmadog's Gwenyth Thomas, who brought the dance back, saying that sailors who came for Ffestiniog slate had carried steps home from far away.

Competitions and eisteddfodau

Eisteddfodau, the Welsh gatherings for poetry, music and performance, are where clog dancing is most visible today. Local and national events both include it. Since the 1960s duets and trios have been added alongside solo classes, which lets groups stage the old scene of one dancer trying to beat another. Squads from Nantgarw near Pontypridd and from Talog near Carmarthen have done well in national competitions. Nantgarw dancers have also travelled to the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and to folk festivals in France and Spain. Quarry slate is still used as a dancing surface in some competitions.

Today and change

The dance has not stood still. New steps and tricks appear at each round of competitions, and the solo style has grown livelier than the English clog dancing it is often set beside. Families and teachers pass it on by showing rather than by writing it down: a learner watches and copies, as Huw Williams, a dancer of recent years, has described. Children and adults take it up, and some use it as a fitness workout as well. The Travelling community in Wales has helped keep it alive. Ash wood is the favourite for clogs because it gives a clearer, sharper sound, though it wears out sooner than other woods.

How Welsh clog dancing is kept

A dancer puts on clogs and takes the floor, alone or with others. The feet set the rhythm, striking toe, heel and sole edge against the floor or against each other. In competition each dancer performs a routine that mixes stepping and tricks, often with a broom, a handkerchief and a candle to hand. The winner is usually the one whose steps and tricks no other dancer can repeat. Away from competitions, clogging happens at eisteddfodau and other gatherings, with musicians playing Welsh tunes or with no music at all.

When and where

Clog dancing has no single day of its own. It belongs to the eisteddfod calendar, and competitions come round with the local and national eisteddfodau. At other times it is danced whenever dancers and musicians meet, indoors on wood or on a slate floor. In the past, work breaks, fairs, taverns and stable lofts were the usual settings.

Wales is its home, above all the slate country and the farming districts. Porthmadog, where the twentieth-century revival took hold, and the areas around Pontypridd and Carmarthen, home to well-known dance groups, are strongholds. Dancers from Wales have also appeared at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and at folk festivals in France and Spain.

What Welsh clog dancing means

To those who keep it, clog dancing belongs to Wales in a way few other dances do. It is the one dance tradition that carried on through the religious revivals of the 1700s and 1800s, when other kinds of dancing were frowned upon. It also carries the memory of quarry and farm work, of men in their working shoes turning a break into a contest. For dancers today it is skill, stamina and nerve, and a link to the people who danced it before them.

Questions people ask about Welsh clog dancing

See also

SteelpanA tuned percussion tradition forged from industrial steel containers in TrinidadMorris danceA rhythmic English folk dance performed in costume with bells, sticks and handkerchiefsChristmas carolFestive songs and hymns sung during the Christmas season and door to doorRapper swordA fast-paced five-person sword dance from the coalfields of North East England, kept alive by teams worldwide.

Good reading and sources

• BBC Wales - Music - Folk and traditionalBBC, Article
• Canlyniadau Dydd Iau 10 Awst // Results for Thursday 10 AugustBBC, Article
• BBC Wales - Music - Folk and traditionalBBC, Article
• Canlyniadau Dydd Iau 10 Awst // Results for Thursday 10 AugustBBC, Article

• Welsh stepdance on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-11.