Welcome to February! What are all the cloggers up to? I'll start!

Here's what THIS clogger is currently...

Reading

Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance of the Appalachian, Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountain Regions by Mike Seeger, with style profiles and footlatures by Ruth Pershing. There is a documentary by the same name which I do not currently own, but I have found clips online. More to come about this book in a future blog post.

Heading to my favorite coffee shop later with the latest book club assignment—The Cider House Rules by John Irving. It's a long one, so I need get started now! We read A Prayer for Owen Meany by the same author last year. I expect the book will inspire an excellent discussion at our next meeting. (This book has nothing to do with clogging, but it's tough to stop book nerds once you get us going on the topic. Consider yourself lucky I'm stopping now, ha-ha.)

Packing my bags for

Cabin Fever clogging workshop in Mansfield, OH. Year number three for this event, and I've attended all of them. The Der Dutchman buffet in Bellville is a MUST before the drive home!

Florida Clogging Festival in Kissimmee, FL. I'll be kicking up my heels at the workshop, then watching the competition all evening. Fair food will keep me fueled for the day, but I will likely skip the fried gator on a stick.

Trying to avoid

All the sickness going around. I'm only aware of one confirmed flu case within my clogging team, but plenty of teammates have missed dance class due to various stomach bugs, respiratory infections, etc. 

Evie keeps hand sanitizer at Fancy Free Studio year-round and reminds everyone to use it after partner dances. Hoping we all make it through winter with a minimum of illness.

Appreciating

C.L.O.G. updated their website and created a wonderful resource for the National Dance List. The page now includes links to cue sheets and teaching videos. Adding to the coolness factor, many of these video teaches feature the original choreographer. Thanks for organizing all this info in one place! I'll be referencing this page regularly as my team continues to work our way through the national dance list/fun dance challenge.

Learning

A routine choreographed by one of my teammates. She has been working hard, and this dance means a great deal to her. Since it involves some partner work, she is teaching me the "boy" part before bringing the dance to class.

Fancy Free's routine for the Smoky Mountain Encore show in March. This will be the first clogging workshop ever for several of our dancers—I may be even more excited than they are!

I hope there's still room left in my brain for all the new workshop routines coming up!

What are the rest of you currently up to?