A Chronology of Country Dance & Song in New York City, 1915-1999

1915: The "United States Branch of the English Folk Dance Society" was founded under the auspices of Cecil Sharp, with centers in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. This organization, which would become today's Country Dance and Song Society, came into existence when there was already much interest in English folk dance; it was taught in city public schools, and 1909 pictures show children maypole and morris dancing in Van Cortlandt Park.

1916: Four to five hundred dancers performed processional, country and morris dances, with songs, hobbyhorses, and maypoles, for an audience of 20,000 in a performance in the New York Stadium of a "Masque of Caliban," produced for the Shakespeare tercentenary by Cecil Sharp. Classes were held regularly in the city, with Marjorie Barnett arriving from England in 1925.

1926: This year saw the first Spring Festival, held at the Seventh Regiment Armory, with an orchestra of members of the New York Philharmonic. Held annually until the second world war, the festivals grew in size and splendor until in 1929 25 groups with 368 dancers took part.

This was also an important year for two major CDSS figures. Marjorie Barnett moved to Rochester and there first brought English dance and music to the attention of Phil Merrill, who would become the long-time, accomplished and beloved CDSS Music Director. Then a student at Eastman School of Music, Phil was soon a wonderful morris, sword, and country dancer, as well as an endlessly inventive and irresistible dance musician who played regularly for classes in New York and later at Pinewoods.

1927-1936: May Gadd came to New York to replace Marjorie Barnett. The Central group eventually held five classes a week, in five New York City areas as well as in Ardsley, Irvington, Great Neck, Essex Fells, Summit, Orange and Plainfield.

In 1937 the "New York Branch" was dissolved, to be replaced by the organization's national headquarters, and May Gadd was appointed National Director, a position she occupied with unparalleled energy and zeal until her 80's and reluctant retirement in 1972. Highlights of this period include participation in the 1939 World's Fair; a last Armory Festival in 1940 with 500 dancers attending; and a realistic change of name from the English Folk Dance Society to the Country Dance Society of America ("and Song" was added in 1967). During World War II, from 1941 to 1945, CDS took part in a weekly CBS TV broadcast of country and square dances at the CBS Studio on Vanderbilt Avenue. Though billed as square dances, the programs often included English country, morris, sword and other ethnic dances for variety. Dance classes then were four evenings a week at Steinway Hall and Carnegie Hall's Studio 61; five teachers and musicians, including May Gadd and Phil Merrill, taught country, morris, Kentucky running set, and American squares. Seven groups were active at this time, four of them in New York City. In 1943, May Gadd took a leave of absence to work with the USO, leaving New York dancing in the hands of Phil Merrill and others.

1945-1972: This period saw the beginning of volunteer comittee-run dance activities in New York, with the establishment in 1948 of the New York Dancers' Council, later renamed the New York Dance Activities Committee (NYDAC), which in turn engendered the present Board of CD*NY. Classes were held in various places, settling finally in 1951 at Metropolitan Duane Hall (now called The Church of the Village), where they continue today.

During these years, big spring festivals were held at Barnard Hall or Hunter College, and new teachers and musicians included Genny Shimer, John Bremer, Marshall Barron, and Eric Leber. A CDSS demonstration team was very active, performing at a UN fiesta, Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Travel Association, Lincoln Center, and elsewhere, including the 1965 World's Fair. A 70-dancer company from New York, Boston, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Kentucky gave four performances of "An English Village May Day." The first CDSS residential weekend ever was held in 1953, and from the next year on there were two weekends at Hudson Guild Farm in New Jersey each year till the late '70s.

1973-1987: In these years, as CDSS became more focused as a national organization, the role of NYDAC became more and more important in New York. Though technically a subcommittee of the Society's Executive Committee, it was virtually autonomous. In the late 1970s, the committee initiated an apprenticeship program that led to the emergence of a strong new group of New York teachers, including David Chandler, Beverly Francis, Bertha Hatvary, and Tom Phillips. Leading teachers working with them were Brad Foster, Christine Helwig, Fried deMetz Herman, Jim Morrison, Sue Salmons, and Genevieve Shimer. Regular musicians during this period included Phil Merrill, Marshall Barron, Paul Friedman, Jim Stevenson, Tom Phillips, and Leah Barkan, with many others frequently joining in.

With the growth of local ritual dance teams that trained their own members, the focus of NYDAC's weekly dance classes shifted. Morris and sword dancing no longer held sway as the dancers concentrated on American contras and squares and increasingly widespread Playford dancing and balls.

1987-1997: 1987 saw major changes in country dancing in New York City. In that year the CDSS headquarters moved from Manhattan to Northampton, and a bit later to nearby Haydenville, Massachusetts. It was left to NYDAC to form the first Board of a new, independent CDSS center called Country Dance * New York.

Since its founding, Country Dance * New York has run dances, workshops, festivals and major dance weekends. Apprenticeship programs organized by CD*NY and its neighboring affiliate the Country Dancers of Westchester have brought new teachers into the fold: Mary Virginia Brooks, Yonina Gordon, Gene Murrow, and Paul Ross. Band workshops and recruiting have brought in fine additional musicians, among them John Austin, George Davis, Bill Peek, and Cynthia Shaw.

Each year from about Labor Day to early June, CD*NY volunteers present two dances a week, plus one or two evenings a month for experienced dancers; numerous special events include the popular Fall Fling and American Winter Festival, the True Brit fund-raising weekend at Circle Lodge, the Yuletide Cotillion, and the annual Playford Ball.

1997-1999: Sharon Green and Carol Martinez have become the latest English dance teachers. The New Year's Eve Dance (1999) for the first time was held at the magnificent Temple Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where the annual Playford Ball has for the last several years taken place.

See also University of New Hampshire - Milne Special Collections and Archives - Country Dance and Song Society Archives