Dixine Schiavi
I began clog dancing in Southern California in 1980, regularly attending clog dance classes, clog dance workshops, and national clogging conventions since that time. Also during that time I had been a member of three different performing and competition clog dance teams in the Southern California area: County Line Cloggers, Beach City Cloggers, and Buckshot. I performed at numerous Southern California venues, including the LA County Fair Pomona, the Orange County Fair, and the main stages at Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. I have also competed and won numerous intermediate and advanced clog dance competitions in the individual, duet and precision team categories at various state-level clog dance competitions. I moved to Anchorage in 1994, and soon joined and performed a short while with Anchortown Cloggers. In 1999 I decided to start my own, all-female, clog dance, percussion & buck dance team, Midnight Sun Cloggers. Since then, there have been over 30 performing members, all who have had no previous clog dance experience; I have taught each team member to clog dance from scratch and am so very proud of each and every one of them.
Midnight Sun Cloggers regularly performs at various annual events, including Anchorage Folk Festival, Alaska State Fair, Eagle River Bear Paw Festival, Downtown Market, and Performing Arts Center shows, as well as various other festivals, events and charity fund raisers. In March 2010, Midnight Sun Cloggers was proud to be one of the headliners at the renowned three-day Cama’i Dance Festival in Bethel, where we performed three shows and also taught a large-scale clog dance workshop. In November 2010, Midnight Sun Cloggers was invited to perform at Samhain, a beautiful and joyous celebration of Celtic New Year.
Midnight Sun Cloggers also enjoys performing with other dance groups in Anchorage; one of our favorites is the Northern Lights Celtic Dancers; combining both our dance styles into unique routines that are co-choreographed by me and members of the NLCD team.
Midnight Sun Cloggers has also performed to the most-excellent live guitar, dulcimer and concertina music of Denise Martin, Jim Kerr, and members of their band, Jubilee.
I do not teach regular clog dance classes to the public, as directing and teaching my own dance team keeps me busy enough. But I am very excited about teaching this single workshop at Celtic Spring Festival. I will have referral info for local clog dance teachers in the area for those workshop participants who are interested in continuing with clog dancing.
For the Celtic Spring Festival: Some of the members of Midnight Sun Cloggers should be on hand to perform/demonstrate clog dancing, and then to help out during the workshop. I will be teaching the basic/core steps of clog dancing, and will then teach a fun dance that all will learn. After the hour, if there are any experienced/interested clog dancers, I will teach a challenging clog dance step workshop.
Click here to return to the page of instructor bios.
Click here to return to the description of Celtic Fest workshops.