House parties. Best fun you can get. Watch the video and consider the feelings evinced by the dancers and watchers. Where is this happening? When? How long have these people lived in this neighborhood? The stepping here is called clogging, as opposed to tap dancing. You find it all along the Appalachia mountains from Cape Breton to Maine and New Hampshire down to the South.
In the eighteenth century, dancing masters traveled round to the great houses and instructed the gentry in social dancing. You needed a big room and some musicians. Meanwhile, the ordinary folk had their dances in the kitchens and barns.
Here is a strathspey, which is a sort of reel, being taught in a studio, but you can imagine a ballroom setting, like this one at Blair Castle in Scotland.
This next one is not a house party but a demonstration by the Edinburgh University dance team. The dress is not traditional, but the dances are typical of the sets done in the country "houses" where the gentry danced in familiar surroundings.
I guess you could call this "bluegrass" or maybe "old-timey"--it's awesome either way. Watch the video and consider the feelings evinced by the dancers and watchers. Where is this happening? When? How long have these people lived in this neighborhood? The stepping here is called clogging. You find it all along the East Coast from Canada down to the American southland.
Up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia or New Scotland, they have been dancing these steps to their Scottish (and some French and some Irish) fiddle tunes in kitchens and living rooms for a long time. In the big houses in Scotland you got a ballroom and a ball. Ordinary folk could still enjoy social dancing. Here, the old-timers in the club or bar get together for some stepping. A good way to watch this is to pick someone to follow and try to imagine doing it yourself. If a smile doesn't come to you, I don't know what. Notice, too, that there is one young couple dancing with the older folk. There was not a separate "youth culture" with its own media outlets, gear, outlook, etc.