Tag: other

Andy Wilson has spent many years supporting family dance in the Santa Cruz area. At Family Week, he is patient and competent and will help you guide your child on those first very tall steps. He excels in making other people better—he’s often run our family camp sound board. Soon your child will be proudly walking tall!

Courtney Tolhurst works in a Waldorf School in Jamestown, California. She was recently accepted into Cal Poly Humboldt as an Upper-Division Transfer student to obtain a Multi Subject Teaching Credential. She adores working with kids of all ages, and is particularly crafty. She loves to dance, sing, and spend as much time as possible in nature! 2025 will be her fourth year attending camp and she couldn’t be more excited!

Nick Cuccia has been bringing his sound expertise to Family Week since 2015. Nick strives to enhance the dancing experience by providing sound that is both clear and enjoyable. Nick has been sound engineer for BACDS’s Family Week, English Week, Fall Frolick/Fall Weekend, Playford Ball, and Fall Ball, as well as NBCDS’s Mad Robin Ball. Nick also leads and teaches contra, English and barn dances throughout northern and central California.

“If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing.” Fifteen years ago, Noe Venable made this Zimbabwean proverb her motto.  Since then, she has helped more than three thousand Bay Area families to sing more, feel better with her award-winning music offerings centering nature, spirit, and authentic connection.  Noe directs two community choruses – Forest Voices Choir for children and Mothersong Chorus for women and nonbinary folks, as well as serving as children’s music director for the Revels. 

Raffi Maslan grew up in the Seattle Washington folk music and dance communities, folk dancing since he was nine, contra dancing since age 11, and performing with the Radost Folk Ensemble since he was 13. He gained an early love of juggling, magic, and other circus arts from being enthralled by street performers at festivals and fairs. He has performed as a magician’s apprentice traveling to ren faires, done puppeteering with giant puppets, and taught juggling workshops at the Bash on Vashon new years camp.

sTåń Fowler “Dance Ranger” is our camp safety officer and also supervises the ropes course. He’s a strong advocate of prevention, and a hitch in the US Coast Guard plus thirty years with the National Park Service has given him practice dealing with everything from bandaid-sized boo-boos to lifesaving emergencies. Having been on the staff of over 150 music, dance, and family weeks and weekends, and also attended somewhere north of 6,000 dances, he is not surprised anymore by anything that happens at camp. The ropes course fits in well with his history of tree, rock, and ice climbing over the years and running the rigging of the Pride of Baltimore II. Ropes and knots are his friends.

Cindy Freid and her son Jamie discovered contra dancing in 2018 and immediately knew they found their home. They are thrilled to be part of the Family Camp community. Cindy has been an avid crafter all her life and especially enjoys a variety of textile crafts, including weaving, knitting, tatting and temari. Over the years, she has taught crafts with various scouting and other youth groups. She is excited to share her love of crafts at Family Camp.

Lorraine Kostka has been leading crafts with children for many years at summer camps and public schools.  Her four kids have grown up attending family camp each year and as teens they still enjoy camp.  Lorraine will share her experience and love of tie dye and other crafts to allow campers a place to create.

Storysmith® Susan Marie Frontczak brings folklore, literature, and history to life; creates stories from thin air; and hones personal experience into tales worth telling again and again. She has performed in 43 of the United States and nine countries abroad. Susan Marie has been teaching storytelling skills since 1991 to both children and adults.  She has led storytelling workshops through CSU Continuing Education, Naropa University, Think360 Arts (formerly Young Audiences), and Colorado Humanities, as well as in her living room. Whether creating stories off the cuff, infusing folk traditions with fresh breath, or presenting a honed dramatic performance, Susan Marie lives up to her motto, “Give me a place to stand, and I will take you somewhere else.”

Bethany Ewers (storyteller, preschool) is a birth doula, herbalist, and Waldorf style educator. She currently helps run a Waldorf based homeschool co-op in Huntington Beach with children from 3-8 years old and manages her small urban homestead of chickens, bees, herbs, and angora rabbits. When she isn’t telling stories and finger plays with her children she can be found running wild and spinning yarn, potting clay, and other crafty madness.

One of the unique performers on the national storytelling circuit today, Angela Lloyd was featured at the 25th (1997) and 31st (2003) National Storytelling Festival, in Jonesborough, Tennessee and regularly appears at regional festivals and theatres across the country. A virtuosa on Washboard, Angela’s performances are a whimsical braid of poetry, story and song played on Autoharp, Tenor Guitar, Spoon and Bell. The stories are selected from a variety of sources including traditional world folktales, the oral tradition, original works based on personal experience and the best in children’s literature, i.e. (Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, the poetry of A. A. Milne, Naomi Shihab Nye). The songs are drawn from her childhood, contemporary singer/songwriters, folk songs, along with her original musical compositions based on the poetry of e.e. cummings, A. A. Milne, and Pablo Neruda.