Young dancers clog up The Hague

The teenagers learned the dance in their own countries

Nearly 500 teenagers from 26 countries have staged a huge clog dance in The Netherlands in a bid to win a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

They performed a modern ballet version of the traditional Dutch clog dance in The Hague on Saturday.

The work - Clogs - is a ballet by the Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen.

The youngsters performed it in oversized, rough wooden Dutch clogs, or "klompen" at the 10th Dance and the Child International Conference.

Adapting

A total of 475 young people learned the dance in their home countries - including Israel, Finland and Jamaica.

Organiser Martina van Dijk said the idea was to see how the dancers adapted to the clogs.

"We thought that would be real fun - to let them all dance in clogs - and they're not comfortable at all, I can tell you, so we had a lot of complaints about that.

"We had a lot of teachers teaching these children all week."

One Canadian student brushed off the discomfort.

"It's fun to learn another culture's dance - it's fun to be in the NL. When in Rome do as the Romans, when in The Netherlands do as The Netherlands does. Go Dutch - clogs!"

Ms van Dijk said the Guinness Book of World Records had accepted the entry, performed as part of the conference's closing ceremony, and hoped the record would be confirmed.