I, David, have been attending Tuesday Night Folk Dancing in various frequencies since 1999. Now, after our illustrious, encyclopedic folk dance guru Deryl Keney has been sidelined with cumulative decades of dancing punishment to her body, I have, reluctantly, taken the mantle of Leader. I came into the role with the least folk dancing experience but the greatest knowledge of the music, after building the digital folk dancing music library for the group over the past twenty-some years. I wasted my youth by not participating in international folk dancing. I only discovered allure of complex rhythms and Byzantine tones when I was in the final years of undergrad at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie, where the Snowy Range International Folk Dancers had been meeting for decades, and many of my friends had actually been folk dancing for years, but never bothered to tell me about! I had been contradancing before that for many years, but I never knew I could have been doing this folk dancing stuff, which I much prefer now. I love the music, and the dancing is pretty good too!

TNFD: The Divergent Evolution from Wednesday Nights at CSU

Jim Graham, a man of generous heart and service to the world, started teaching international folk dancing and founded the CSU Folk Dance Club in ?1969? while working as the Foreign Student Advisor, and later, as Director of International Services, at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Many members of the Fort Collins and surrounding communities joined CSU students on Wednesday nights for recreational international folk dancing. Attendance regularly topped 200. Jim played accordion, sold folk dance records, and taught for years at the Lighted Lantern Folk Dance Camp in Golden, CO. Jim continued to lead Wednesday night folk dancing at CSU until his health deteriorated such that he was no longer able. He died in 1997. Some folks tried to keep the CSU group going without him, but they were unsuccessful. (DATE?)

Nationally-acclaimed folk dance instructor Dick Oakes relocated to Colorado from California in the 1970s. He started teaching international folk dancing through the Fort Collins Parks & Recreation Department, every Tuesday night, 8:00-11:30 PM, at the City Park Center/Club Tico, under the appellation Fort Collins Folk Dancers for $1.00.

The performance group Storm Mountain Folk Dancers was founded in the spring of 1975 by Diane Montgomery, Dan Prendergast, and Jeff Klute. They had each developed a love of international folk dance through Jim Graham’s Wednesday night folk dancing at CSU.

In 1983, Dick Oakes founded the International Folk Dance Club in Fort Collins. When Dick left the area, Dan Prendergast took over the group, and when Dan left, Deryl Keney took over. Sometime in that evolution, the name just became Tuesday Night Folk Dancing.