Dancer and collector. Clara Boyle lived in Ambleside, England
Clara Boyle was the English Folk dance Society (now the EFDSS) teacher for the Lake District Branch and the Cumberland Branch before WW2 and as such was very familiar with the social dances in the area. In this role she had taken Douglas Kennedy (then Director of the EFDS) to see a local clog dancer, Mr Clifton, and several steps had been noted. This was in about 1925.
Possibly in the same year she had also discovered Richard Allen who was a (perhaps part-time) dancing master in Edenhall and had learned from him a number of social dances:
Circassian Circle
Square Eight
Long Eight
Speed the Plough (As God Speed the Plough)
She was available to provide a skeleton notation for Circassian Circle.
She also acquired the social dance the Rifleman from Una Blezard of Ambleside, who was one of her assistant teachers.
Information derived from and interview by Tom Flett with Clara Boyle on 3 January 1960 (interviewed with Lucy Short).
See also
Flett, Tom, Correspondence with Mrs Boyle, 5 September 1961
- Letter to Mrs Boyle 5 September 1961
- Reply with information re Kendall Ghyll (?), no date