Folk Dance of Europe

UK: Folk Dance Enterprises. Very Good/Very Good. 1990. First Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 0946247145 Dust jacket complete slight fade to spine. Light brown cloth covered boards with bright red titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 144 illustrations. xvi, 344 pages clean and tight. Nigel Allenby Jaffe was forced to abandon a promising career as a concert pianist because of spinal problems, but not before having given recitals both at home and abroad, including the Wigmore Hall, London, and having gained performer's and teacher's diplomas from the Royal College and Royal Academy of Music, and a Fellowship from Trinity College, London. He turned his attention then to studying languages and history, graduating in the latter from London University. His wife, best known in the dance world under her maiden name, Margaret Dixon-Phillip, is a dance teacher and examiner. Her especial love being folk dance, she introduced him to a new world, and, during nearly thirty years of marriage, they have spent all their spare time travelling to the far corners of Europe (and much of the centre also) to study folk dancing. For the past ten years, they have intensified their research, meeting researchers, teachers and specialists, and making video-recordings of folk dance groups from practically every country in Europe. When he is not researching, he fulfils the many invitations he receives to lecture, and to adjudicate at international folk dance festivals. His passion for folk dance, where he regards himself as a pan-European (one grandfather being born in Russia, another in Germany of a Polish father and a German mother, one grandmother being born in Lithuania and the other part Irish), is equalled only by his love for cricket and rugby, in which spheres he does a `Jekyll and Hyde' and becomes ardently and unreasoningly nationalistic. He also has two cats (pa deux chats), but the least said about them the better. .