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.[1]
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.[1]
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.[1]
In 1996, Crum was a panelist at a conference for the National Endowment for the Arts entitled "Vernacular Dance in America".[1]
^ abcdefgHouston, Ron. "Dick Crum". Society of Folk Dance Historians. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
Source books
Casey, Betty (1981). International Folk Dancing U. S. A. Doubleday. ISBN9781574411188.
Laušević, Mirjana (2007). Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America. Oxford University Press. pp. 190–194, et al. ISBN978-0190269425.
