Flatfoot Dancing!

Flatfoot Dancing & Afton Coombs

What is Flatfoot Dancing?

Flatfoot dancing is one of America's oldest and most distinctly homegrown art forms. Rooted in the folk traditions of Appalachia, it developed over centuries as settlers - drawing on African, Irish, and Scottish influences - created something entirely their own. Unlike tap, which emphasizes precise footwork and performance spectacle, flatfoot is earthier and more improvisational. Dancers keep their weight low, their movement grounded, and let the music lead. The feet become a percussion instrument, answering the fiddle and the banjo in a conversation that has been going on in American mountain communities since the 1700s.

It goes by different names in different places - flatfoot, clogging, buck dancing, stomping - and styles vary by region and family tradition. What they share is an authenticity and directness that is hard to find in more formalized dance traditions. Flatfooting has never really been about performance; historically it happened at kitchen dances, on porches, at crossroads. Seeing it done well is like catching a glimpse of something that was never meant to be on a stage.

About Afton Coombs

Afton Coombs is a Los Angeles-based movement artist and musician dedicated to the preservation of traditional American and Irish dance forms. With a background spanning flatfoot, tap, and jazz, Afton practices both improvised authentic forms and original choreography rooted in folk tradition. They also sing and play traditional early American and Irish music - making them a rare practitioner equally fluent in the movement and the sound of these traditions.

Afton came to flatfooting almost by chance, meeting their future teacher Rebecca Stout at a bluegrass jam. It turned out to be a defining encounter. They went on to win first place in step dancing three times at the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and advanced to the finals of the National Buckdance Contest at Maupinfest - two of the most respected competitions in the old-time dance world.

Beyond competition, Afton dances at old-time jams and with bluegrass and Irish bands up and down the West Coast, including the Praties, the Honeysuckle Possums, and Sweeten the Third, and brings this tradition into educational settings through Powerhouse Percussive Dance.