Dick Crum

{{Short description|Folk dance teacher}} {{about|the folk dance researcher, teacher and choreographer|the American football coach|Dick Crum (American football)}} thumb|Dick Crum, 1989 '''Richard George Crum''' (December 8, 1928 – December 12, 2005) was a prominent international folk dance researcher, teacher and choreographer. He conducted extensive field research in Eastern Europe in the 1950s (Shay, p, 121) and was choreographer for the Duquesne University Tamburitzans. He ran several international folk dance festivals, including those at St. Paul, Minnesota and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.<ref name="SFDH">{{cite web |last1=Houston |first1=Ron |title=Dick Crum |url=http://www.sfdh.us/encyclopedia/crum_d.html |publisher=Society of Folk Dance Historians |accessdate=30 April 2019}}</ref>

== Early life == Dick Crum was born to German and Irish parents, the oldest of five children, and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended a Romanian school and took a great interest in that culture. His mother, Florence "Fee Fee" Crum, taught some folk dancing, and Dick and his sister Lois attended the Serbian Days festival in Hibbing and Chisholm, Minnesota and the St. Louis, Missouri Folk Dance Festival.<ref name="SFDH"/>

He attended the University of Pittsburgh to receive a bachelor's degree in Romance Languages, and Harvard University to receive a Master's in Slavic Languages and Literature.<ref name="SFDH"/>

== International folk dancing == Crum was a dancer, technical adviser, and choreographer with the Duquesne University Tamburitzans starting in 1950. He was named program director of the Festival of Nations at St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1952. He also consulted and choreographed for the AMAN Folk Ensemble.<ref name="SFDH"/>

In the early 1950s, his popularity as an international folk dance teacher increased rapidly. He did research on folk dances in the Balkans, visiting there seven times. He taught not only dances from the Balkans, but also Slovenian couple dances and other European dances.<ref name="SFDH"/>

In 1996, Crum was a panelist at a conference for the National Endowment for the Arts entitled "Vernacular Dance in America".<ref name="SFDH"/>

In addition to his avid interest in international folk dancing, Crum had a proclivity for languages and learned many, including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, French, Spanish, and Romanian. He also knew some Chinese, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Old Church Slavonic.<ref name="SFDH"/> Crum worked as a multilingual editor for Agnew Tech-Tran and later Berlitz GlobalNet, both translation services, in Los Angeles, California.

== See also == International folk dance

==References== {{Reflist}}

==Source books== * {{Cite book | last = Casey | first = Betty | title = International Folk Dancing U. S. A. | year = 1981 | publisher = Doubleday | location = | isbn = 9781574411188 | pages = }} * {{Cite book | last = Laušević | first = Mirjana | title = Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America | year = 2007 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = | isbn = 978-0190269425 | pages = 190–194, et al }} *{{Cite book | last = Shay | first = Anthony | title = Choreographing Identities: Folk Dance, Ethnicity and Festival in the United States and Canada | year = 2006 | publisher = McFarland & Co. | location = Jefferson, North Carolina | isbn = 978-0786426003 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/choreographingid0000shay/page/ ix, 12, 19, 39, 97, 121, 162] | url = https://archive.org/details/choreographingid0000shay/page/ }}

==External links== * {{cite web|url=https://eefc.org/balkan-camp/scholarships/dick-crum-scholarship/|title=Dick Crum|date=30 March 2014 |publisher=East European Folklife Center}} * {{cite web|url=http://www.socalfolkdance.com/master_teachers/crum_d.htm|title=Dick Crum |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180829125459/http://www.socalfolkdance.com/master_teachers/crum_d.htm |archivedate=August 29, 2018 }} Originally published by Dick Oakes' Phantom Ranch. This page has numerous photographs. * {{cite web|url=http://www.socalfolkdance.com/articles/interview_crum_1974.htm|title=Interview with Dick Crum, 1974}} * {{cite web|url=http://www.socalfolkdance.com/articles/crum_culture_session_1979.htm|title=Dick Crum Culture Session 1979}} * {{cite web|url=http://www.socalfolkdance.com/articles/crum_culture_session_1980.htm|title=Dick Crum Culture Session 1980}} * {{cite web|url=http://www.socalfolkdance.com/articles/crum_culture_session_1981.htm|title=Dick Crum Culture Session 1981}} * {{cite web|url=http://www.socalfolkdance.com/articles/costumes_crum.htm|title=Costumes}} Short article by Dick Crum.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crum, Dick}} Category:Folk dancers Category:1928 births Category:2005 deaths Category:University of Pittsburgh alumni Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:Duquesne University people