![]() This was the misconception that the folklorist Mike Seeger set out to rectify with his excellent, woefully underseen documentary Talking Feet. And for the last three hundred years, if not longer, the southern hills have been home to more styles than can easily be counted. Indeed, most Appalachian folk dances are solo dances. Yet these group dances, exhilarating as they may be, represent only a portion of a dizzyingly large tradition. Stereotypes linger despite-or perhaps because of-the public’s supposed familiarity with the tradition I have seen “Appalachian-style” square dances as far away as Vancouver, BC. And to this day, there may be no single piece of Appalachian culture that remains more deeply misunderstood than its folk dances. But as Phil Jamison notes in his book Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics, it was the locals’ dancing that truly “epitomized the ‘otherness’ of this…‘strange land’” to those early visitors. This attitude has colored everything from the area’s music to its politics. ![]() ![]() Outsiders continue to view the mountains and their inhabitants as simple, even backwards. ![]() These heavily romanticized reports laid the groundwork for a perception of Appalachia that the region has never truly escaped. ![]() Watch a full length stream of Mike Seeger's Talking Feet documentary from 1987. ![]()
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