Marianne Taylor taught folk dancing locally, nationally, and internationally for over fifty years. Her warmth and enthusiasm inspired several generations of dancers. With “clarity and charity,” she taught hundreds of school programs and residencies, Scottish and English country dance classes, and international folk dance workshops. She was 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 her then-husband 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.

In 1995 Marianne became 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. She was an Artist in Residence for primary, middle and high school programs through the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. She was 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. In March 2008, the National Folk Organization honored her with its Preserving Our Heritage Award.

Marianne played piano for contra, Scottish, and other kinds of dance since the early 1950s and was a regular member of the Scottish dance band Tullochgorum. She played monthly with the Lamprey River Band at a contra dance in Dover, NH, and was sometimes a musician and sometimes the caller at the Deerfield Town Hall Contra Dances, which she had organized since 1991. She also played regularly with the Strathspey and Reel Society of New Hampshire and several other groups. She appeared as backup on several Scottish/Celtic music CDs. These include:

In recent years, Marianne’s interests included leading a small group tour in Portugal, helping to organize a second concert tour in Scotland with the Strathspey and Reel Society of New Hampshire, and playing piano for a Scottish dance tour on a schooner in the Greek Islands.

Marianne taught many hundreds of dances in her long career, including Auld Reekie Hornpipe (which she wrote), Bare Necessities, Bourrée Droite du Pays Fort, Burns Night, Dundee Whaler, Hora la Patru, Kamenopolsko, Karapyet, Jabadao, Nao Vas ao Mar, Tonho, Neapolitan Tarantella, Nonesuch, Orleans Baffled, Pas d’Espan, Pinewoods Reel, Potrkan Ples, Sardana, Shrewsbury Lasses, Thady You Gander, Trekantet Sløjfe, Vira da Nazaré, Vira do Sitio, Waltz, Waters of Holland, and Well Hall.