Marianne Taylor, 78; taught dance, kindled folk art scene

Marianne Taylor cofounded the Folk Arts Center of New England in Cambridge.

Skirt a-twirl as she danced a Kalamatiano or a Sarajevka, Marianne Taylor conjured the cultures of Greece and Bosnia-Herzegovina while teaching lessons in Cambridge and introducing hundreds of beginners to the joy of moving to the rhythm of unfamiliar music.

"One of the lovely things about folk dance is the fact that it doesn't require the background it takes for something like ballet. There are simple dances - plenty of them," she told the Globe in 1980. "After all, what can you do with two feet? You can run. You can walk. You can hop. You can gesture. What else? You have a pretty basic instrument here."

A virtuoso of that basic instrument, Ms. Taylor cofounded the Folk Arts Center of New England in Cambridge and spent decades inspiring class after class of students to learn everything from a simple contra dance to an Austrian Laendler.

Ms. Taylor lived in Lexington for many years before moving to Deerfield, N.H., where she helped found the Strathspey and Reel Society of New Hampshire. She died at home on Aug. 19 at 78 of sarcoma cancer.

"It was almost like she was having an out-of-body experience," Micki Taylor-Pinney of Lexington said of watching her mother dance, teach, or accompany a lesson on piano. "She was just enraptured. She was always so totally engaged and very observant. When you're a piano player in a band, you have to be really sensitive to what the other musicians are doing. And when you're teaching, you have to be very sensitive to the mood in the room and notice when people need cajoling, when they need scolding, when they need critical feedback. She was a real observer of human nature."

Said another daughter, Tina McBride of Lexington: "Everything she did was about her passion for music and dance, and she lived her life inviting others to join in her passion and enjoy it."

No aspiring dancer was too inexperienced for Ms. Taylor, who told the Globe in 1980 that some students take lessons "because it's good exercise. Some come because the music attracts them. Some are bored stiff and they come because they want more to do than just watch television."

Her daughter Andy Taylor-Blenis of Newton, who teaches dance, told the Globe in 1999: "My parents always said that the beginner is the life of dance and to treat them with care."

Marianne Patterson's love of the arts began while she grew up in Lansdowne, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, where her father played banjo and sang.

"Some of the songs my grandfather taught me as a child were the songs I sang with her a few hours before she passed away," McBride said.

Following the lead of her mother and an aunt, Ms. Taylor went to Cambridge and studied at Sargent College, a part of Boston University, where she majored in physical education, minored in dance, and graduated in 1951.

Like music, dance had nearly always been part of her life. "She started ballet when she was 5, but morphed into modern dance when she got older," McBride said.

Marrying Conny Taylor after college, Ms. Taylor began delving into a host of new dance traditions. While bringing up five children in Lexington, she began giving lessons and workshops on English and Scottish country dance, along with international folk dance steps.

Teaching took her throughout North America and to Australia, Japan, and Switzerland. She taught movement classes to the disabled and was certified as a teacher by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

To many, Marianne and Conny Taylor were the center of folk dancing in the region, and the couple founded the nonprofit Folk Arts Center of New England in 1975, initially running it out of their Lexington home before basing it in Cambridge.

"It started with contra dancing and Scottish dancing, then moved to international folk dance, and that was a passion for both of my parents," McBride said. "They started the Folk Arts Center, and growing up this was in our house. There were always dancers and musicians around, a mimeograph machine in the basement, and we were always stuffing envelopes for upcoming dances. Every day she was able to live her passion."

Describing the Folk Arts Center in the 1980 interview with the Globe, Ms. Taylor said the object was "to create a magnificent situation where people would know whenever there was something going on in the way of folk arts." Lessons and workshops were held almost nightly and the Taylors led performances in Copley Square and at First Night.

Ms. Taylor's marriage to Conny Taylor ended in divorce in the early 1980s and she later moved to Deerfield, N.H., with her companion, Don Gorman. There, she continued to teach and sat in as a pianist with bands and for dances.

"What was really amazing to me about her was how she managed to make everyone - from her children to her extended family to her colleagues to people she just met - all feel like they were part of her circle," Taylor-Pinney said.

"She was always, always in one way or another trying to get people to join in," McBride said. "One of the last conversations I had with her on the day she died was about joining in the circle and participating. She was still teaching right up until the end."

In addition to Gorman and her three daughters, Ms. Taylor leaves a son, Mark of Southampton; a brother, Michel Patterson Jr. of Colorado Springs, Colo.; six granddaughters and a grandson.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on Sept. 28 in Trinity Episcopal Church in Newton Centre.