The whirling skirts and clacking heels of Folkmoot USA represent eight different nations spanning the globe, but while the diversity makes for a beautiful spectacle, having all those languages in one place can make verbal communication a little difficult. There’s not much similarity between English, Russian and Chinese, but dance is universal. 

“Music is an international language,” said Concord resident Mary Talbert, who traveled to see the Folkmoot dancers with her daughter Misty Mowrey. 

By Jacob Flannick • SMN Correspondent

After ending a series of lessons in which she learned the basic steps of clogging, Dee Decker did not want to stop dancing.

So she held out hope for another floor, eventually moving into a classroom in a vacant church in Bryson City a couple years ago. That is where she — along with a handful of others who regularly take clogging lessons — spent hours during the winter and summer months, stomping and twirling to the old-time folk rhythms of Appalachia.

Darkness enveloped the vehicle as soon as it exited Interstate 40.

Cruising around sharp S-curves in the mountain community of Fines Creek in the remote northern reaches of Haywood County, headlights peered across vast fields and by quiet farmhouses where inhabitants were winding down after another bountiful day. A heavy fog rolled into Western North Carolina as distant homes sparkled like far away stars in the sky. Barreling further into the country, and away from any semblance of town, it seemed you could drive off the edge of the earth if you kept pushing any longer.

One of this year’s Folkmoot groups, Bleuniadur, hails from northern France in the region known as Brittany. SMN’s Michael Beadle conducted an email interview with Fabrice David, executive director of the all-volunteer Breton folk music and dance group.

Ted White, a bass player with Whitewater Bluegrass Company, was warming up backstage at a Folkmoot performance last year when a Cyprus fiddler struck upon a melody everyone recognized, spurring a lively, impromptu jam among a hodge-podge of international musicians.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Folkmoot USA, the annual international dance festival with performances held throughout Western North Carolina, always is marked by riotous colors, intriguing costumes and smiling faces, making it a photographer’s paradise.