BACDS Spring Fever Dance Weekend
March 16 - 18, 2012
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BACDS Spring Fever Dance Weekend March 16 - 18, 2012 |
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Staff:
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Erik Weberg is one of our favorite west coast
callers. He plays and calls in Portland OR and all across the country,
leading contra dances and English Country dances of all varieties and chooses dances that are
tailor-made for the occasion at hand. Erik's ability to connect with
dancers and his sly sense of humor insure an upbeat, congenial
atmosphere on the floor as well as a terrific dance experience. He also
plays flute with several Portland bands.
Erik chooses dances based on simple criteria. The dances have to feel good and they have to be fun. Flow, interesting figures, and connection with the music are what make dancing sublime. Whether it's smooth like butter or driving like a freight train, it's got to make sense and feel good. He's known for teaching efficiently and clearly with a playful approach and a good sense of community cooperation. |
| David Newitt arrived at Swarthmore College in the fall of 1976 and was shocked to discover that this pillar of higher education had a two year physical education requirement. Faced with the alternatives of being smashed to pieces on the football field and going to "folk and square dancing," the choice was clear, and he has been dancing ever since. Starting with international folk dancing, he was soon dragged into the local Scottish Country Dance group, the college morris and rapper sword team, and, when it started in 1978, the Kingsessing Morris team of Philadelphia. After a couple years in Colorado working for HP and teaching folk dancing, he came to Berkeley in 1982 to work on a Ph.D. in physics and to do country and display dancing. He has concentrated on country dancing in the Bay Area, teaching and playing music for regular Scottish and English dances, and calling contras and the occasional square dance. He's also featured as the Dancing Master for this year's BACDS Playford Ball. |
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Bill Tomczak and Dave Langford of The Latterday Lizards are New England based dance band musicians fervent with the desire and talent to ignite flames under dancing feet. With a wide ranging and hopelessly eclectic repertoire including everything from Irish and Scottish traditional jigs and reels to Balkan, blues and swing tunes (often juxtaposed next to each other) they bring excellent musicianship, playfulness, drama and unrelentingly infectious rhythm to their dance performances. With Bill on clarinet, sax and drum and Dave on guitar and fiddle, they blend swing, rock-and-roll and jazz influences with traditional foot-stomping dance music to make an innovative, spontaneous and rhythmically inflammatory sound that gets people's pulses racing and feet moving. |
| Ann Percival is a pianist, guitarist and singer, erstwhile social worker and artist. From the time her Norwegian grandparents took her dancing at the Sons of Norway hall in Brooklyn to Girl Scout Camp where Ann discovered she loved singing, Ann has been a leader. She has in recent years found special enjoyment teaching visual arts and crafts. She is a founding member of Wild Asparagus and The O-Tones and is an exception dance musician for contras, squares, and swing. Ann's playing is highly inventive while still maintaining an irresistible rhythm. Her vivacious personality and amazing repertoire of swing, gospel, and other songs of many traditions are sure to keep everyone in camp jumpin' and jivin'. |
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Jim Oakden started playing piano and clarinet at an early age and stumbled into early music from the classical music scene. After six years performing early music, he discovered the world of traditional and ethnic music. Having diverse tastes, he has played in many bands and performs on an absurd number of instruments, including accordion, mandolin, several styles of bagpipes, recorders, whistle and zurna (to name a few). A dancer himself, he specializes in playing for dancers in a bunch of bands (including with Anita Anderson in the English/Contra band Roguery and with Michelle Levy previously with StringFire and now with The Whoots) playing for ECD, contra, morris, Irish, Breton/French, Greek, and Bulgarian . He has been on staff at myriad dance camps throughout the country. |
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Anita Anderson is an extraordinary English country and contra dance pianist, playing with Bag o' Tricks / Tricky Brits, Roguery (with Jim Oakden) and other Northwest bands. She is also a superb dancer, and this informs her playing to the dancers' delight. She brings a large bag of tricks to her piano playing, with influences from do-wop, English, ethnic, and vintage dance music—all in attentive service to the dancers. Her syncopated, harmonically complex use of the keyboard has transported many a listener to Dance Nirvana. Anita is an excellent singer, Scandinavian musician and dancer, and composer of contra and English country dance tunes. |
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Michelle Levy has been performing on and exploring the possibilities of the violin/viola for over 20 years. Starting out classically, she fell in love with the spontaneity of folk music while in college, and soon began a career focused on accompanying vocalists, improvising, and performing ancient music on fiddle, viola, and Medieval vielle. When Michelle's not busy playing for English and contra dances with Jim Oakden in The Whoots, she’s illustrating and teaching fiddle music in her studio in Berkeley, and co-producing concerts at the Rose Street House of Music, a completely volunteer-run non-profit to support women songwriters. |
and more to come...