Alex Fisher

Alex Fisher has been involved in clog and step dance since 1984 when she joined Furness Clog Dancers in South Cumbria and was inspired by the Lakeland Step Dance Tradition. She also attended regular classes with the legendary music-hall step dancer Sam Sherry before moving to Durham in 1992. Here she performed with Newcastle Cloggies, Short Circuit Rapper and Kern Morris and became involved in step dance research and analysis with the Instep Research Team.

Whilst in the N.E. she taught workshops & classes and ran schools’ projects for Folkworks and also embarked upon a Masters Degree in Dance Studies (Univ Surrey). Her dissertation: Clog Dance. Revival, Performance & Authenticity – An Ethnographic Study (2000) focussed on the competition hornpipe steps of clog dancer Jackie Toaduff. These steps have since been notated and published in the Newcastle Series.

Now living in Lancashire, Alex is working as a community dance artist and is teaching and promoting clog dance as a local tradition; running regular classes and developing material suitable for schools (see www.clogdance.co.uk). She has also been a visiting lecturer on university courses at Newcastle, Roehampton and Liverpool Hope. She has continued to collect memories of clog-wearing activities in Lancashire and has produced a DVD illustrating some of the research done in Chorley. (see CHORLEY SPARKS – A Social History of Clog Culture, www.clogdance.co.uk)