RICHARD POWERS

VINTAGE PARTNER DANCES

Richard Powers has taught 80 dances at Stockton Camp, and is returning to teach at Stockton for the twelfth time since 1988.

Richard is currently a dance historian and social dance instructor at Stanford University’s Dance Division. His focus since 1975 has been the research and reconstruction of American and European social dance forms, working from a personal collection of over 2,000 historic dance manuals. He is one of the world’s foremost experts in American social dance, noted for his workshops in Paris, Rome, Prague, London, Venice, Vienna, Geneva, Seville, Edinburgh, 22 dance workshops in Russia, and 25 teaching trips to Tokyo, as well as leading workshops across the U.S. and Canada.

Richard has choreographed folk and vintage dance suites for many major companies, including AMAN Folk Ensemble, the Ethnic Dance Theatre of Minneapolis, the BYU Folk Ensemble, Ahmet Lüleci’s Collage Dance Ensemble in Boston, Westwind, the Narodno Folk Dance Ensemble, and the Beseda Dance Theatre in Prague. Richard was recently invited by Buckingham Palace to see the waltz quadrille that he was asked to choreograph for the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth commented that she loved it.

Besides Stockton Folk Dance Camp, Richard has taught at many of the major dance workshops and camps, including Mainewoods, Pinewoods, the National Folk Dance Federation of Japan, several of California’s Statewide Festivals, Idyllwild, the Flurry Festival, Texas Camp, Mendocino Folklore Camp, and Buffalo Gap, as well as many regional folk dance groups. During the pandemic, Richard  has been busy presenting Zoom lectures for historical dance conferences and organizations in New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Denver and Bar Harbor, Maine.