Ron Houston Status:   Active Specialty:   International Range:   International	CLICK TO ENLARGE
Ronald "Ron" Houston archives and publishes information about the history and practice of international folk dancing. Born in Austin, Texas, Ron began folk dancing in 1955 with George A. Lowrey. Other early dance and recreation influences included Roy McCutchan, Jane Farwell, and Maine Folk Dance Camp. Ron began teaching in 1969 and, in 1971, helped found and conduct for some 20 years the Festival Folklórico Internacional in Oaxtepec, Morelos, Mexico. By 1973, he was directing weekend seminars and the Friday-night folk dance sessions on the campus of the University of Texas, sessions that lasted a quarter-century. Ron remembers well a 1978 workshop with the notable professional folk dance teacher and amateur slight-of-hand magician, Dick Oakes! Filling a need in 1976, he compiled the Folk Dance Catalogue, a classified listing of over 10,000 names for over 5,000 dances. His source collection has now grown to hundreds of thousands of descriptions, tens of thousands of phonograph recordings, and thousands of books and magazines. Ron studied dance formally in Poland, earned the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society (RSCDS) teaching certificate, and studied informally in many other European countries and in Mexico. He went on to teach workshops, not only around his home state of Texas, but also the United States and abroad. In 1987, pioneer folk dancers asked him to create an archive, and he founded the Society of Folk Dance Historians (SOFDH), publishing the widely respected annual series "Folk Dance Problem Solver" (each issue presenting the history and descriptions of approximately 40 folk dances), the quarterly "Report to Members" (called by many the spiritual heir to Vyts Beliajus' "Viltis" magazine), and the "Folk Dance Phone Book and Group Directory" (an alphabetical, classified, and geographical directory of folk dancers, groups, teachers, musicians, vendors, etc.). With nine academic degrees already, Ron and wife Tatiana pursue the PhD in library and information science at the University of Texas at Austin and homeschool their daughter, Tani. Ron has studied, taught, and enjoyed many folk dance genre, including pre-electrification Israeli dance, remnants of pre-Renaissance European dance, the Romanian dances of Larisa Lucaci, the Ukrainian dances of Vasil Avramenko, Polish dance, Scottish dance, the Mexican dances of Alura Flores, and Bulgarian dance structure. Beyond his many publications and the Folk Dance Archives, Ron has given to folk dancers the dance Marinera Monsefu, which he learned from Pam Sharpe (who learned it in Peru).

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