Peter Muldavin and his wife, Helene Krumholz, have known Alison since 2008 and were honored to become founding members of the Advisory Board of Alison Cook Beatty Dance Company in 2012, at the very start of her company.

Peter graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in city planning in the mid-1960s. While on campus, he served three terms as an elected member of the Student Body senate on the 27,000 student campus. During his time in Berkeley, he became indirectly involved in modern dance. He was living there with his first wife, who as a child, was a member of the Lester Horton Dance Theater in Los Angeles. Peter briefly was a member of a couple of different performing companies, one for international folk dancing, and another with the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, an avant garde Tibetan theater group.

Fast forward to the 1980s and Peter found himself relocated to New York, the cultural capital of the world. For the past 20+ years, Peter and Helene have supported dozens of arts organizations, including dance companies such as Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, Pascal Rioult, Lydia Johnson, Amy Marshall, New York City Ballet, as well as The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, NY Gilbert & Sullivan Players, The Actors Fund and The York Theater. In connection with his urban and city planning background, in 2009 he became a charter member of Friends of the High Line.

Peter has traveled extensively around the world. On one trip, he actually taught a Russian folk dance to a group of Russian kids at a youth camp outside of Moscow! His main dancing activity in recent years has been his passion for the social dance called Zydeco (Cajun/Creole movements/rhythms) from the Louisiana and East Texas area. Peter also plays a percussion instrument called the ‘rubboard’ (aka ‘washboard) and has been called up on stage to play with nearly sixty Zydeco and Cajun bands over the last thirty years or so.

An important part of Peter’s professional career has been as a certified teacher of the Transcendental Meditation technique. He has been practicing this method for 55 years and has been teaching for 53 years, in recent decades as a volunteer. He was trained as a teacher in India in 1969 with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the movement and was one of the first 100 teachers in the world. Now more than 40,000 others have been trained.

Peter has the largest collection in the world of vintage (1950s and earlier) children’s phonograph records. His uniquely curated library of these rare discs will eventually be housed in the Library of Congress. Peter is known worldwide as the “Kiddie Rekord King” and his website has been visited by people from over 120 countries and territories.