with his friends and the public at large, he started Koroyar. While there have been many changes in personnel over the years, Koroyar has been in continuous existence since, I believe, 1969. During the 1970s and most of the 1980s, Richard taught folk dancing through community services courses at local community colleges (Los Angeles City College, Mt. San Antonio College, and Rio Hondo College). Richard was one of the best dance teachers that I have ever met. He had a remarkable ability to break a dance down to it's component parts, and to relate the similarities between dances. He was also (infamously so) a stickler for style, and, in my opinion, had the most complete understanding of what makes one region's style different from another's. That was howI met Richard. I had started folk dancing in high school. After high school, I started taking classes at LACC (but not Richard's). This was during the time when Mario Casetta was organizing those incredible folk dance / music festivals for (Radio Station) KPFK. I started noticing Koroyar performing at those festivals, and was intrigued by their repetoire. They were doing unusual dances that I wasn't seeing elsewhere, and also some familiar dances, but done differently than I was used to. When I learned that Richard was teaching through LACC's community services, I decided to take one of his classes. Despite my two left feet (I've improved since then), and my penchant for really bad puns (actually, probably because of it), he invited me to join Koroyar. It