Dayton, Ohio
2011 Honor Roll Dancers
Leslie Hyll and Edmund Cordray
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Dayton, Ohio |
2011 Honor Roll DancersLeslie Hyll and Edmund Cordray |
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M.V.D.C. Honor Roll
Dancer(s) Nomination for 2011 |
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Nominating Club: Miami Valley Folk
Dancers (MVFD) |
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Name, Address, &
Phone of Couple/Person(s): Leslie Hyll & Edmund Cordray |
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Number of Years
Dancing: More
than 70, combined |
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Club Elected
Positions and Years Held (Pres., VP, Sec., etc.) Elected positions
Leslie and Eddie have held within MVFD are:
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Club Appointed
Positions and Years Held (Kitchen Chairperson, etc.) Appointed positions
Leslie and Eddie have held within MVFD are:
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Service at Club
Level (Kitchen, Greeters, Clean-up, Decorate, etc.) The list of
appointed and elected positions Leslie and Eddie have held – and hold –
speaks for itself. However, they
contribute in many other ways as well.
For example, Eddie has arranged for a number of mini-workshops in
addition to our regular workshops, while Leslie tracks not only all the
dances taught each Thursday, but all the dance music played. They take care of a lot of the loose ends,
whether it’s laminating badges or mending curtains or finding beds for
out-of-town visitors. Please see the writeup for the major non-official responsibilities Eddie
and Leslie have assumed within MVFD and the larger community. |
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Number of Raids and
Retrievals MVFD does not
"raid"; this is not customary in folk dance. |
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Special Activities
(Organize or Assist with Demos, Weekend & Week long Workshops, Special Dances, Parades,
World A’Fair, State Fair, Festivals, etc.) Leslie and Eddie
have planned and danced in a wide range of demos for many years now. They have performed at the Waynesville
Sauerkraut Festival, MVDC Day in the Park demos, MVDC Holiday at Home demos,
and myriad demos for nursing homes, schools, and all kinds of social
organizations (including the Buckeye Dance Conventions) in a remarkable range
of venues. In addition, Leslie has
chaired nine MVFD workshops over the years, and Eddie and she have been
heavily involved in finding suitable teachers for MVFD’s workshops for at
least the last 10 years. Leslie and Eddie
have been involved with the Dayton International Festival Inc. (A World A'Fair) every year since 1982 (Leslie) or 1990
(Eddie). In connection with AWAF, one
or the other (or both) of them has: -
performed
with four different ethnic dance groups -
choreographed
and directed American, Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Pan-Slavic suites
for the Živio South Slavic Dancers -
directed and
choreographed for the Bagatelle French Dancers for 10 years -
directed the
Italian dancers for 3 years -
directed and
choreographed for the Beseda Czech and Slovak
dancers several times And that doesn’t
count the many performers’ costumes Leslie has sewn or embroidered over
20-plus years! |
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M.V.D.C Position and
Years Held (Pres., VP, Treasurer, Trustee, etc.) Michael
Solomon Support Committee Chair (1998-2010) |
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State & National
Positions and Years Held (State Corp, State & National Convention
Positions, etc.) None, but Leslie has
organized folk dance sessions, demos, and costume shows when the convention
has been in Dayton, and Eddie has served as the convention Treasurer. |
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State & National
Positions and Years Held (State Corp, State & National Convention
Positions, etc.) California:
1978-1981 National:
1982 Ohio:
1984, 1988, 1991, 1995, 2001, 2006 In
addition to State and National Square Dance Conventions, Eddie and Leslie
have attended a great many folk dance and leadership workshops, festivals,
and camps, among them the below:
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Write Up The Miami Valley Folk Dancers are very
pleased to nominate Leslie Hyll and Edmund Cordray as our Honor Couple of
2010. Both of them have contributed in
many ways, both great and small, to the Miami Valley Folk Dancers, to the
Miami Valley Dance Council, and to the Dayton community. The positions they have held with MVFD (see
above), their contributions to MVDC (see below), and their involvement in
various recreational dance groups and events (not just in Dayton) all bear
witness to the leading role they have played in international folk dance for
more than 30 years. Leslie Hyll became a member of the Miami
Valley Folk Dancers in 1972 at age 12.
With her parents Lou and Nancy Hyll, she attended dance workshops in
Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky. As a
teenager she performed with the Kettering Historical Dancers, and wrote a
published paper on the history of American folk dance. During and after her college years, Leslie
broadened her knowledge by attending dance workshops from Maine to Norway,
and even a Playford Ball in Manchester,
England. Eddie Cordray had dancing parents as well,
and was an accomplished folk dancer by age 12. The list of his West Coast memberships at
the end of this writeup shows that he was usually
active in several clubs at a time, with an emphasis on Balkan dance. In his twenties, he performed in the
semiprofessional ensemble Westwind. Eddie has attended dance camps all over the
country; he was still in his teens when he partnered his sister as she taught
Norwegian workshops across the U.S. It is therefore no surprise that when Eddie
found himself in Dayton for a training course and checked out the local
dancing, he should have found a kindred spirit in Leslie. Their commitment to folk dance was apparent
even in their 1991 wedding, which was held in folk costume at the Michael
Solomon Pavilion and attended by most of MVFD. Eddie and Leslie continue to attend
workshops together; in the past few years they have been in not only
Columbus, Indiana, and Illinois, but also Wisconsin and California. Leslie and Eddie’s breadth of experience has
made them a wonderful resource for MVFD, where all the regular teaching is
done by members. Leslie is perhaps the
most knowledgeable of our dancer-instructors, and gladly teaches either
beginners’ or intermediate-level dances.
Her repertory is wide, although she particularly enjoys English,
German, French, and American dances.
(Eddie’s range is also wide, but emphasizes the Slavic dances.) Leslie has also taught courses in dance at
Wright State University, and always includes some teaching and audience
participation in the demos she arranges.
As can be seen from the list of Leslie and
Eddie’s positions held within MVFD, Leslie has also put her leadership skills
to good use within the club. She has
served in almost every elected position available at MVFD. She has written a history of the club, and
maintains both hard-copy and electronic archives of programs, letters,
photographs, and other documents dating back to its beginning. Leslie recently led a group in going
through Grace Wolff’s many boxes of historical documents and dance material,
sheet by sheet, and organizing them so that they could be added to the MVFD
archives. Leslie established (and continues to
maintain) a website for the Miami Valley Folk Dancers that provides not only
information about our club, but links to ethnic and folk dance groups all
over Ohio as well as to related organizations like MVDC and Culture
Works. In addition, she has set up and
manages a group e-mail account (mvfolkdancers@yahoogroups.com)
for members of MVFD and other interested folk dancers. Last, Leslie maintains an Access database
of present and past club members as well as dance contacts throughout the
Midwest and even farther afield, which the club uses for mailings and
publicity. One of the largest of Leslie’s undertakings
has been the creation of a CD containing scanned syllabuses from every single
one of the workshops sponsored by MVFD from 1953 to 2004. Its alphabetical index of all the dances runs
to 22 pages of small type. In 2000 she
organized a massive scanning and proofreading effort; with the help of
numerous MVFD members (and Eddie), the CD was completed and published in the
fall of 2005. This syllabus CD has been enthusiastically reviewed in various
dance newsletters, and orders have come in from all over the country as well
as abroad. Leslie and Eddie are
contributing all profits from this labor of love to the club. For his part, Eddie has taken charge of
preserving the wealth of music that MVFD has acquired over its 56-year
history, from records to .wav files.
After transferring all of the club's records and tapes to a CD format
(some 350-400 hours of work), he categorized all the music by name, nationality,
type, and CD number to yield a book-size listing. As technology progressed, he put all the CD
music onto a computer that offers our programmers and teachers speedy
retrieval and considerable flexibility in handling the music. (No more record boxes!!) As members bring back music and dances from
new workshops, and as software evolves, Eddie continues to update our
collection and add new capabilities. All the groups that dance at the Pavilion
have benefited from Eddie’s willingness to take responsibility. His chairing of MVDC’s Michael Solomon
Support Committee for 12 years (1998-2010) has contributed greatly to its
current status as possibly THE best dance hall in Dayton. He has overseen the refinishing of the
floor as well as several other major improvements, like the restrooms. In addition to serving as the committee’s
treasurer, Eddie has personally taken care of most of the ongoing repairs and
maintenance to the Pavilion, from installing new locks or gutters to
replacing the hot-water heater – and much more. Somehow the wall panels are magically in
place come winter, the light bulbs replace themselves…. Before Eddie moved to Dayton, he had provided
sound for bands at various West Coast dance camps and festivals. He continues to provide or manage sound at
various local dances, such as most of the Cityfolk
contra nights, as well as at dance camps like the Door County Folk Festival
in Wisconsin. (His choice of car is
dictated by the need to transport an entire sound system at the drop of a
hat.) Eddie has put his skills at the
disposal of a number of local dance groups as well as visiting teachers. Both Eddie and Leslie have created and
nurtured relationships with other cultural organizations, such as Cityfolk, Culture Works, and Dayton Dance Partners. These partnerships have introduced folk
dance to a larger audience than just MVFD, while bringing to Dayton some
teachers or bands that the club could not have afforded on its own. Eddie and Leslie started out by
contributing their time and knowledge; when the first National Folk Festival
was held in Dayton, they recruited and organized volunteer workers for the
event and presented a style show of ethnic costumes. Over the years, however, they have quietly
increased their financial support to these institutions, and have been instrumental
in helping them continue despite Dayton’s economic challenges. For their many combined years of
contributions to recreational dance in Dayton, and their continued commitment
to keeping folk dance available to the greater Dayton community, MVFD is
proud to nominate Leslie Hyll and Edmund Cordray as our Honor Couple of the
year. Together, they have truly helped
to shape the face of international folk dance in this city for the past 20
years. PRESENT AND PAST CLUB MEMBERSHIPS: Leslie and Eddie are currently
active in five dance organizations:
Over the years they have been
members of a considerable number of other dance groups, including:
In addition to the
dance-oriented organizations listed above, Eddie and Leslie belong to:
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Copyright © Miami Valley Folk Dancers 2011