Every year at the National Folk Organization Annual Conference, individuals are chosen to be honored for their commitment, passion and energy preserving, researching and/or teaching the folk arts. At the recent 2008 NFO Conference in Orlando FL, this award went to Marianne Taylor, for her significant and lasting contribution to folk dance. Past honorees have included Nelda Drury, Sunni Bloland, Yves Moreau and Dick Crum.
“We honor Marianne Taylor for her tireless, welcoming, energetic approach the people in the folk milieu....We recognize Marianne as a teacher in the schools, and in the recreational environment; a researcher, musician, and program-organizer, promoting and preserving our heritage in the world of folk arts.” announced Jo Crawford, NFO Board member, with award committee member Roo Lester looking on.
The award presentation occurred on March 1, 2008, during the annual award banquet. The previous afternoon, Friday, Feb. 29, Marianne addressed NFO members with her lectured entitled: Following Folk Dance in the Eastern US for the last 55 years. This was her recollection of the people who influenced her, from her days as a student at Sargeant College in Boston, through her start as a teacher herself. It also included her view of the current state of recreational folk dancing.
Marianne Taylor has been teaching folk dancing locally, nationally, and internationally for over fifty years. Her warmth and enthusiasm have inspired several generations of dancers. With “clarity and charity,” she has taught hundreds of school programs and residencies, Scottish and English country dance classes, and international folk dance workshops. She has been featured at Stockton’s University of the Pacific Camp, Mendocino Camp, Pinewoods Camp, and workshops in Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Australia and Switzerland and from British Columbia to Newfoundland in Canada.
Marianne graduated from Sargent College, Boston University in 1951 with a B.S. in Physical Education and a minor in Dance. She received her teacher’s certification in Scottish Country Dance from the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society in 1957, and the RSCDS Scroll of Honour in 2005. In the mid-1950s, she and Conny Taylor started running weekly international folk dance classes in the Boston area. She co-founded the Folk Arts Center of New England with Conny in 1975 and served as its Program Director through 2004.
Since 1995 Marianne has been a member of the Ralph Page Legacy Committee of the New England Folk Festival Association and a committee member for the Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend. Recently she has been an Artist in Residence for primary, middle and high school programs through the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. She is the recipient of the Boston Dance Alliance’s 2007 Dance Champion Award in recognition of her immeasurable contribution to recreational folk dancing in the Boston area.
