Audiences at the Carthage Buggy Festival will find their toes tapping along as the Quicksilver Cloggers perform their lively dance routines during the 22nd annual event.

The group is set to take the stage at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, May 8, as part of the festival's stellar entertainment lineup.

Founded in 1996, the Quicksilver Cloggers dance to a variety of musical genres, including bluegrass, country and pop. The group primarily does precision line dancing, where everyone on the team performs the same steps.

Dance members include Jennifer Garner, Sarah Daffron, Aileen Garner, Pam Kennedy, Lou Smith, Brenda Ritter and Bonnie Hanham. Although the group's home base is Robbins, members come from a number of different areas.

Daffron is a certified clogging instructor and choreographs the group's routines.

Under the direction of Aileen Garner, the Quicksilver Cloggers dance at spring and fall festivals throughout the area, church gatherings and local nursing homes.

And, while most of the dancing, Garner says, is for fun and exercise, the group has done some competitive dancing.

In fact, the Quicksilver Cloggers competed at the 2009 North Carolina State Fair Folk Festival, placing second in the Traditional Line Dance category (ages 26+). The group also earned an honorable mention in the Novelty Folk Dance, International Folk Dance, Clogging Routines (ages 26+) category.

Judging at the N.C. State Fair's Folk Festival is based on audience appeal, authenticity, appearance, enthusiasm and competency, so Buggy Festival audiences can expect to enjoy the Quicksilver Cloggers' award-winning dance performance.

The official folk dance of North Carolina, clogging is a distinctive dance style that originated in the Appalachian mountains. Settlers from Northern and Western Europe brought their respective folk dance traditions to the colonies, which were further shaped by Native American and African-American dance influences.

These influences combined and evolved into a percussive "foot-tapping," high-energy style of dance now known as clogging.

In the 1920s, Bascom Lamar Lunsford added team clogging to the competitions held at his annual Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, helping establish clogging as a significant part of Appalachian cultural heritage.

The North Carolina General Assembly adopted clogging as the state's official folk dance in 2005.