Obituary for William C. Reynolds, submitted by Elsie Ivancich Dunin

WILLIAM CLOYD REYNOLDS
(1945 –2004)

William (called Bill by his friends and colleagues) was mostly known through
the world as the Editor of the ICTM\'s Study Group of Ethnochoreology Dance
Research Newsletter. Although I knew Bill in earlier years as a \"folk dancer\"
from California, my working relationship with him began at the ICTM 1987
conference in Berlin, when he proposed the idea for a Study Group Newsletter,
and I offered to compile dance research listings of the membership to be
included in the Newsletter. Little did we realize that first the Newsletter
and later the Dance Research for the members of the Study Group would become
foundational international publications in the growing field of
ethnochoreology.

Bill\'s dance involvment did not start until he was a young adult. He was an
undergraduate student 1963-1969 during the turbulent \"flower years\" at the
University of California at Berkeley (UCB), one of the centers of student
strikes for social equality and curricular changes toward those goals. But it
was also at Berkeley that Bill discovered dancing, particularly
recreational \"folk dancing\" (one of the faculty being Sunni Bloland). During
the 1960s non-partner circular form dances were the rage in the
California \"Bay\" area where he lived, studied and later worked as a High
School teacher, taught folk dancing to a student and community group in
Berkeley, and became an administrator of the Berkeley Folk Dance Festival.
Although his Bachelor of Arts degree was in experimental psychology, and
additional studies were in philosophy, engineering and music, his passion for
dancing led him to Europe to seek out additional instruction. He became a
student in character, ethnic and historical dance at the Folkwang Hochschule
in Essen-Werden BRD (1972-1974), earning a Certificate in Dance. While in the
school, he translated a piece, \"Foundations for the analysis of the structure
and form of folk dance: a syllabus,\" for the Yearbook of the International
Folk Music Council, volume 6. Here he began his contact with the
International Folk Music Council (the former name of the ICTM). He also
became a tutorial student under Albrecht Knust, at that time a leading
authority on the Knust-Labanotation system. This was a major turning point in
his life. With a knowledge of both German and English, and a hunger to master
the notation system, Bill was the ideal person to be employed by Knust to edit
the English language text of the Dictionary of the Kinetography Laban
published in 1979. The later titles of his presentations and published
articles attest to Bill\'s continuing quest to understand dancing through
notation and structural analysis.

For three years, and continuing with his notation interest, Bill worked for a
Radcliffe Trust research project at the Birmingham Polytechnic University, a
project concerned with human movement notation, and developing criteria for
evaluating notation systems. This interest engaged him further with
collaboration in various activities of the Language of Dance Centre in London,
bringing his Knust editorial knowledge to more advanced study of Labanotation
with Ann Hutchinson.

Staying in touch with his dancing interests, Bill became employed with
Folkraft-Europe, then directed by Ricky Holden and centered in Belgium. The
company published folk dance records and books, and Bill was engaged in
teaching recreational folk dance to community groups, schools, and teacher
training workshops. At one of these seminars held in Hungary 1978, he met a
young dancer from Denmark, Lilian Larsen, also with dancing and teaching
experiences. By 1980 Bill married Lilian, taking a major life\'s step to live
in southern Denmark, and from there continued to expand his knowledge of
dances and recorded music for these dances through field research with special
interests in Hungary, and later in Denmark. During the 1980s he continued his
research on human movement analysis, and used the research project at
Birmingham Polytechnic to develop a doctoral dissertation at Trondheim
University in Norway (unfortunately not completed).

From 1988, he became the founding editor of the Newsletter for research on
traditional dance, and as editor, a member of the Board of the reconstituted
Study Group on Ethnochoreology in the ICTM. Although controversial in his
opinions that did not often coincide with the approaches by fellow
ethnochoreologists, he nevertheless continued in this editorial role until his
serious illness brought an early end to his life.

Among his activities in the mid-1990s Bill served as an external editor for
the International Encyclopedia of Dance for all papers on European traditional
dance, and authored the Encyclopedia\'s article: \"European traditional dance.\"
His other dance research presentations and published works are all listed in
the Dance research published or publicly presented by members of the Study
Group on Ethnochoreology, volumes 1989, 1991, 1995 and 1999.

Thank you Bill for giving the spark in 1987 with both the Newsletter and
the \"biblio\" project. They are lasting contributions to the field of dance in
general and more specifically to ethnochoreology.

* * *

Like life itself
all beautiful things
must die
or could this be
just another autumn?

People die
nature comes back year after year

by William C. Reynolds (1945-2004)