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Concept
International folk dance
Summary
International folk dance includes Balkan dance, Middle Eastern dance, contra dance, Hungarian dance, polka, Chinese dance, and Japanese dance. Clubs featuring these ethnic dance genres are enjoyed by non-professional dancers for entertainment. Many clubs that use collections of ethnic folk dances will use the term "international folk dance" or similar in their name.
International folk dance developed in the immigrant communities of the United States of America during the first half of the 20th century.
Traditional dances such as branles, polkas, quadrilles and others have been done internationally for hundreds of years; however, the creation of international folk dance as such is often attributed to Vytautas Beliajus, a Lithuanian-American who studied, taught, and performed dances from various ethnic traditions in the 1930s.
Also, in the mid 1930s, Scandinavian dancing began to take hold in non-Scandinavian communities. Clubs began to form around this style. A pioneer of this era was the ethnic Chinese illustrator Song Chang, who, struck by the lack of bigotry among the Scandinavian dancers, encouraged others to join, advised clubs, and had a club named in his honor, the Chang's International Folk Dancers, still located in San Francisco. Other prominent teachers and promoters of international folk dance in its first few decades included Michael Herman and Mary Ann Herman, Jane Farwell, and Dick Crum.
Those groups known as international folk dance clubs began to take hold in the 1930s and 1940s, with more diverse selections of music than just Scandinavian, with Balkan dances, Western European dances, and dances from the Philippines. The Folk Dance Federation of California was founded in 1942. By 1946, there were approximately 100 clubs in California alone. In 1948, the College of the Pacific Folk Dance Camp, now known as the Stockton Folk Dance Camp, was founded. Other camps were founded later, and all draw on teaching talent both American and foreign.
Official source
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