Dick Crum



Richard George "Dick" Crum was a prominent international folk dance researcher, teacher and choreographer. He conducted extensive field research in Eastern Europe in the 1950s and was choreographer for the Duquesne University Tamburitzans. He ran several international folk dance festivals, including those at St. Paul, Minnesota and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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 impressed them with his interest in their culture. His mother, Florence "Fee Fee" Crum, taught some folk dancing, and Dick and Lois attended the Serbian Days festival in Hibbing and Chisholm, Minnesota and the St. Louis, Missouri Folk Dance Festival.
He attended the University of Pittsburgh to receive a Bachelor's in Romance Languages, and Harvard University to receive a Master's in Slavic Languages and Literature.

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.
In 1951, his popularity as an international folk teacher increased rapidly. He did research on folk dances in the Balkans, visiting there seven times. Not only did he teach dances from the Balkans, but also Slovenian couple dances and other European dances.
Crum worked as an editor for Agnew Tech-Tran, a translation service in Los Angeles, California. He learned many languages, including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Spanish, and Romanian. He also knew some Chinese, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Old Church Slavonic.
In 1996, Crum was a panelist at a conference for the National Endowment for the Arts entitled "Vernacular Dance in America".