There’s no audience for Dance Connection’s Clogging Competition team Sunday, March 26, but the members are still dressed to impress. With dancers clad in jeans, black shirts and white clogging shoes, rehearsals for Clogging Connection are taken as seriously as any performance.
To the cloggers, the weekly dance rehearsals are invaluable. With members driving as far as Jacksonville and Sarasota to the Plant City dance studio on Wheeler Street, every minute of practice time is made to count — especially over the next few months.
In mid-May, the 24-member competition team will travel to New York City for the first time to participate in the 11th Annual National Dance Parade. The annual parade, designed to showcase multiple styles of dance and celebrate diversity, will feature over 80 dance styles and thousands of dancers.
The idea to participate in the parade was the brainchild of Kaley Conn, dance instructor and daughter of Dance Connection owner Becky Conn.
“We’re the only cloggers in the parade,” Kaley Conn said. She found the parade online after visiting New York on vacation. “We applied and got in, and we’ve been fundraising since then.”
The team will head to the Big Apple Friday, May 19, and will dance in the parade Saturday, May 20.
Since they were accepted, the team has held multiple fundraisers to cover the costs of airfare and lodging.
“We’ve raised about $10,000 so far,” Kaley Conn said. “We’re about $150 shy per person, so about $3,000 total.”
The team is determined to go together.
“Clogging is really a family,” Jamie Conn, Kaley’s uncle and fellow clogger, said.
He would know — it was his family who started what would become Dance Connection over 30 years ago.
The Clogging Community
Today, Jamie Conn’s sister, Becky Conn, is the operator of Dance Connection. The dance company has been located on Wheeler Street for the last six years.
But it was their mother, Debbie, who got the family involved.
“She wanted my sister to dance,” Jamie Conn said. “I was about 12 or 13, and she wanted me to try it, too. I was awful. But there were about 15 girls my age in the dance class, so I went back. Once I got good, it was a different story.”
Eventually, the competition team was born, with today’s members ranging in age from seven to 57.
Until her passing, Debbie Conn was the heartbeat of the clogging group.
“She passed away last July,” Jamie Conn said. “She did everything. She wrote all the dances in her wheelchair, even when she couldn’t use her feet.”
Three decades later, the group has expanded into an even bigger family. To raise money for the New York trip, cloggers come together on weekends to wash cars, sell chocolate and host garage sales.
“I’ve washed so many cars that I don’t want to wash my own anymore,” Jamie Conn said. “But everybody helps out. We do everything together. We dance together, we go out to eat together. We’re one big family and we have fun. That’s our main thing.”
Contact Emily Topper at etopper@plantcityobserver.com.