We know, you know about tap dancing and you may even know about clogging, but what about flat footing?

Carla Dover was born and raised in the mountains of Letcher County in eastern Kentucky.

As a child, she learned how to flat foot dance.

Now she's determined to share her knowledge with others.

I think it's just really valuable to share my story of being somebody who's from eastern Kentucky, who grew up with a bunch of beautiful traditions.

And not only that, the arts are such a beautiful way to invite people into our world, to share our lives and to break down those misunderstandings.

I am a Kentucky musician, dancer and cultural educator.

The salad days I perform is called Appalachian flat, floating or clogging.

It's a style that evolved from a mixture of the European roots of some of our Kentucky ancestors from Ireland, Scotland, England, also with influences of Indigenous Native American dancing and African American dancing.

And so those styles obviously mixed together in a lot of ways.

It came up with tap dance and clogging and flat footing.

And if you wanted a really simplest difference between clogging and flat footing, I would say clogging is often done in teams with synchronized choreography and flat footing is what most people think of as a very similar style, but usually just performed as an improvization with live fiddle and banjo music.

It's very simple and accessible.

A lot of times people will tell me I'm too old or I'm too out of shape or I'm too heavy and I just invite people to try it anyway because it's a great, fun way to exercise.

And it's also not it's not so hard that the average person can't access it because this dance style, it's not made to be dance, you know, on the big stage.

It is made for porches and bar dances and living rooms and jam sessions.

And so I think this dance styles for everybody.

I love teaching that flat footing basic.

So it's step, lift, pull, step, lift, pull, step, lift, pull, step, lift, pull.

So if I add the toes, looks like that, you can also add a sound on that step with the heel like a little scuff.

So if I add the here it is playing with the toes and the heels and then you can add beats and leave them out yet that it doesn't matter that it did it at the top.

So that is one of the steps that helps you unlock having that conversation with the fiddle, mimicking the fiddle tune lines.

And that's just one step and there's lots of steps you can learn.

So I love teaching people how to do that.

During the pandemic, when things shut down and like many other musicians, I was suddenly cut off from every single source of income that I had.

I just started offering these different zoom classes, and I, you know, I did balance singing of Kentucky and banjo tunes of Kentucky.

And I did this flat foot dancing.

And when I started to offer the dance classes, which I had previously mainly just done at like an elementary school residency or a festival, all of a sudden, I was having people sign up that I'd never even heard of, that I never even met.

Like it has blown me away.

How I've been able to reach students from all over the world.

I have students in Sweden, in Germany, in Ireland, in Scotland and England.

In Canada, all over the United States.

I've had about 150 students come through my academy now.

And now that things are open up and I'm touring again, I'm never going to stop doing the academy because it's it's really important to me to make it accessible to people.

And I don't want this art form to die out.

I've spent a lot of time collecting this knowledge and I want to pass it on and preserve it.

When you learn a traditional style from somebody that grew up with it and can tell you the stories of the people and the places and the situations where they learned it, it adds a whole nother dimension.

And I think that's special.

So I'm proud to pass that on.

And good thing she is.

If you're interested in learning more about flat footing, check out karla Gover dot com.