OWASCO - Brooke Stevens took tap and ballet dancing lessons as a little girl.

On Sunday, the 9-year-old from Auburn watched as a group of cloggers clog danced to the tunes of Trisha Yearwood, bluegrass singer Rhonda Vincent and others during an Erie Canal heritage event held at the Ward O'Hara Agricultural Museum.

“It's going to be really interesting,” she said. “It's a different culture and I like the way they do the clog dancing.”

The Erie Canal Cloggers, based in Jordan, comprised of dancers young and old, performed Appalachian style clogging, which clogger Linda Boehm defines as “a countrified version of an Irish step dance

Wearing crushed velvet red, blue and purple short-sleeved shirts with matching sequined belts, black pants and white tap shoes, the dancers awed some 150 onlookers with their fast footwork, clapping and whooping.

Dancer Christina Martinez and her daughter Cecilia, 9, of Baldwinsville, first saw the Erie Canal Cloggers performing at the New York State Fair four years ago.

They made it a point to join the group, and have been with them for three years.

Boehm signed up with her granddaughter so they could have some “bonding time together,” she said.

Whether it be with the cloggers or the people who came to the event, family seemed to be an underlying theme on Sunday.

Martha Shaw, one of the museum's commissioners, planned Sunday's event as the last of three events in the past two months that endeavored to draw the people of Auburn out of their homes and into the agricultural museum for a day of fun with the family.

She did the programming and public relations “to bring people into this museum,” she said. “It's living history and there's nothing better than to harvest it and bring in people to see it for themselves.”

The whole point to the agricultural museum is to present history, and organizers made sure that people left the event knowing more than they did when they first walked in.

Michael Riley, author of 󈫼 1/2 Miles of the Erie Canal,” talked to those in attendance about the waterways and aqueducts - and, of course, the Erie Canal - of Cayuga County.

Museum Director George Komer wanted this last event before Christmas to get people to the museum to see what it's all about.

And it certainly did that for Stevens, her mother Mary Beth Nezami and grandmother Ann Suertin.

“I think this is going to be a fun time for a Sunday afternoon,” Nezami said. “Otherwise (Brooke) would have been in front of her TV or playing with her dogs. It's fun just to get out.”

Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at alyssa.sunkin@lee.net or 253-5311 ext. 239.