Daniel Potter was dancing before he was born, and he now does so mostly in Princeton, NJ and Philadelphia, PA. Daniel sings and dances with Handsome Molly, a ritual dance team from Princeton where he also frequently runs sound for English dances. As a dance organizer, Daniel is on the committee for ESCape Week at Pinewoods and helps run the All-Ages Folk Dance in Princeton. Outside of traditional music and dance, Daniel teaches music and math at Princeton Friends School and directs the Riverside Ringers,
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Though often seen in New England, April Birnie dances primarily in Princeton, NJ and Philadelphia, PA. April dances on Go Figure rapper and leads Handsome Molly, a ritual dance team from Princeton. She also helps organize the February Fling, a yearly advanced English Dance in Princeton, and serves on the committee for ESCape Week at Pinewoods. As her day-job, April works in data management for pharmaceutical companies.
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Carol grew up in a family steeped in music and dance from all over the world. As a college freshman she learned to hop the back fence to get to the nearby English dance. At that point, she gave up performing classical music in favor of playing for contra, English country, and Colonial era dance in the Philadelphia area. Returning to her native New Hampshire in the 1990s, she joined the contra dance band Northern Spy,
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Tom Roby has been teaching English dancing since undergraduate days, and is well-known as an ECD leader on both coasts. Currently he is one of the three main callers for CDS Boston Centre (calling regularly with Bare Necessities and Friends), and maintains a busy schedule teaching at special events, dance camps, and weekends. Credits include Pinewoods, Mainewoods, LCFD (gender-free), NEFFA, BACDS, Cascadia (Seattle), etc. For five years he taught an intro ECD course, “Dance with Jane Austen”
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Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Shira Kammen has devoted herself to exploring the worlds of early and traditional music. A long-standing member of the early music groups Ensemble Alcatraz, Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia; Hesperion XX; the Boston Camerata; the Balkan group Kitka; the King’s Noyse; the Newberry and Folger Consorts; the English Country Dance Bands Roguery and Night Heron, and the Oregon, California, and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals.
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A hybrid player of classical violin and contemporary fiddle, Sarah-Hadley Yakir brings a rich sound and distinctive style to traditional music. After touring extensively internationally as a classical violinist, she was introduced to contra dancing in 2018 and frankly, the rest is history. She plays primarily with her band River Road.
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Carrie Rose, a flutist and composer in the Washington, DC area, freelances with regional orchestras, grooves for folk dances, unfurls a luscious array of chamber music, and wails out avant-garde chamber music. At folk dances (English Country, Scottish Country, Contra, Waltz) Rose can be spotted as a dancer and as a musician who fuses long melodic lines, edgy crunchy effects, and innovative countermelodies, exploring grace and boisterous energy. On YouTube she posts flute and video concerts in nature with performances in streams,
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Belgian-born Paul Oorts, is very active in the world of English, contra, and vintage dances in the DC-Baltimore area. With the trio Goldcrest he performs at dance events all over the US. He also performs and tours with his wife, hammered dulcimer player Karen Ashbrook. As a teacher and staff musician, he has been on faculty at many week-long camps including Augusta Heritage Center (WV) the Swannanoa Gathering (NC), Common Ground on the Hill (MD),
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Dave Wiesler (Newark, DE) began his musical journey as “the guy who could figure out the chords” in his high school garage band. Nearly 20 years later he discovered playing folk music for dances, and felt that the job description had been written just for him. At home in a wide range of styles, Dave is in demand for contra, English and Scottish country dancing, swing, waltz and vintage dance; and his music has taken him across the country and into Canada,
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Laurel Swift is a fiddler, singer, dancer, and an inspiring instigator of creative new projects and performances rooted in the folk arts. Laurel performs on double bass and clogs with her band Gadarene and plays fiddle with ceilidh band The Gloworms.
Laurel has choreographed and devised national touring dance productions for Morris Offspring, co-created and performed Under Her Skin with Debs Newbold, advised theatre and film companies on using folk music and dance material,
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