AMAN International Folk Ensemble
~ 50th Anniversary Reunion Honoree ~
DICK CRUM 50th Anniversary Gala Award Dinner - 10/12/13
Bio from the AMAN50 souvenir program book (Plaque accepted posthumously by Katia McClain)
When Dick Crum moved to Los Angeles in 1972 in his early 40s, he didn't drive. Perhaps this was the result of living in urban areas: St. Paul where he was born and spent his formative years followed by lengthy periods in Cambridge, MA as a graduate student in Slavic languages at Harvard and in Pittsburgh, PA where he worked for many years with the Duquesne University Tamburitzans. Nevertheless, he didn't drive and in Los Angeles, that was an anomaly. Even after moving into his Franklin street apartment in Santa Monica and when faced with a daily early morning commute to Woodland Hills for his translation work, his status as a non-driver was for practical purposes, sacrosanct. He took the bus even if this meant getting up at 5AM to make the necessary transfer in Westwood to arrive in Woodland Hills by 7AM. OK, some of you who knew him will say "he did have a car and he did learn how to drive" and technically, that's true. Paolo, a translator friend of his gave him a trustworthy older Volvo sedan that Dick nicknamed "Veronica." Occasionally he drove it but mostly it sat on the street unused. Dick valued not only the contemplative time the bus provided, he loved to talk with other riders, his everyday fellow travelers. This was the quintessential Dick Crum.
Richard Crum was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on December 8th, 1928 and died in Santa Monica, California in 2005 shortly after his 77th birthday. His influence in the folk music and dance world was profound. As a teacher, one needs only go to the Phantom Ranch website http://www.phantomranch.net/folkdanc/teachers/crum_d.htm to get an idea of the depth and breadth of his knowledge. Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, he began his association with Aman and I believe his first choreography was the men's Romanian dance "brîul." From the late 70s and into the early 80s when he became Aman's consulting artistic director, his choreographic efforts included suites from Transylvanian Romania, the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. His was able to brilliantly couple performance creativity with ethnographic context and the stage result was stunning. |
As an
ethnographer, Dick was able to draw upon his uncanny linguistic
ability. Essentially, he had a working knowledge of all the romance,
slavic and germanic languages and was absolutely fluent with many of
them. As an
illustration in what I remember being the mid-90s, he was asked to
write an article on Albanian dance for the International Encyclopedia
of Dance. Albanian was one of the few European languages he had little experience with, so to bolster his bibliographic understanding and with the aid of old foreign service materials, he acquired a reading knowledge- in one weekend.
Dick was respected and loved throughout the country by those of us who knew him through his dance teaching. He was equally respected and loved by his comrades in language and technical translation. When we held a memorial for him a few months after he died, I contacted some of his translator friends whom I had met over the years. Those that came to that memorial celebration were overwhelmed by the experience in part because they had no concept of his involvement in ethnography or folk dance. They knew him as a lover of ideas, ideas carefully expressed and translated, and as a researcher. They really didn't know about the other world he inhabited... our world, and it was a bit of a revelation to them.
In truth we saw him in much the same light because he touched all with the same gentle spirit and humanity.
Miamon Miller
Dick was respected and loved throughout the country by those of us who knew him through his dance teaching. He was equally respected and loved by his comrades in language and technical translation. When we held a memorial for him a few months after he died, I contacted some of his translator friends whom I had met over the years. Those that came to that memorial celebration were overwhelmed by the experience in part because they had no concept of his involvement in ethnography or folk dance. They knew him as a lover of ideas, ideas carefully expressed and translated, and as a researcher. They really didn't know about the other world he inhabited... our world, and it was a bit of a revelation to them.
In truth we saw him in much the same light because he touched all with the same gentle spirit and humanity.
Miamon Miller