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Young clogger hoofs her way to Brazil
By KWESI WREKON OBENG ST. PETERSBURG -- Only 16, Andrea Apple of St. Petersburg has been clogging for years. This week, she will be at an international competition in Brazil with the only group representing the United States, the Gainesville-based Dance Alive, a professional ballet company. The event is the seventh International Folklore Festival of Passo Fundo, which is being attended by 16 other countries as diverse as Argentina and South Korea. The youngest in her Dance Alive group, the teen brings a unique background to her troupe: home schooling and synchronized swimming. She was home schooled until the 10th grade and is close to receiving her associate's degree from St. Petersburg College. That sort of independent study accustomed her to the kind of practice this trip requires: Because of the distance between the dancers, the Dance Alive team mostly practiced on their own, using videotapes to pretend to be part of a group. The dancers met once a month since last April. Andrea says swimming has built her stamina to endure long hours of stagecraft. As a member of the Suncoast Water Works, she participated in what was billed as the world's largest synchronized swimming competition in Seattle last month. Her team emerged the 10th best national team after the nine-day event. She is looking forward to this week in Brazil. "I am excited about this tour because I like dancing," she said. "I love to be on stage. I like culture." As part of the biennial festival, Dance Alive members -- eight women and one man -- will organize workshops in American folklore for selected local schools and communities in Passo Fundo. They will also attend workshops on Brazilian folklore. Dance Alive will largely perform American folklore clogging at the festival. Clogging is an American folk art that embraces tapping, Irish and Canadian step dancing, jazz, Polish polkas, German stepping and clapping. "Andrea started learning clogging at a tender age," said Neoka Apple, her mother and coordinator of the Pinellas Parent Educators Association, an organization of parents home schooling their children. "I am extremely excited" she is participating in the festival, Andrea's mother said with a smile. Three folklore groups make up the Dance Alive team: Sidekick from La Belle (which is midway between Fort Myers and Lake Okeechobee), Soundstage from Gainesville and Southern Exposure from St. Petersburg. The 16-year-old has won many national and state awards clogging with her group. At 11, she was a member of the Southern Exposure Cloggers, which won the open precision category of the 1997 National Champions Dance-Off, organized by the National Clogging and Hoedown Championships in Silver Dollar City, Mo. She said her group put in 70 performances in two weeks.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks Letters |
