Susan Marie Frontczak, Storyteller
Cara McMillan, Commmunity Singing
The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers
Storysmith ® Susan Marie Frontczak brings literature to life, creates stories from thin air, and hones
personal experience into tales worth telling again and again. Her stories and living history presentations
have taken her to theaters, schools, libraries, and corporations in thirty-three of the United States as well as abroad. She also performs and teaches through Think360 Arts in Education, and presents and coaches through Colorado Humanities. Her original stories have been heard on Colorado Public Radio (Morning Edition), at the Colorado Music Festival Young People's Concert, through Story Gleaner productions, and
on her audio recording "The Three Fishes & Other Stories." This will be Susan Marie's eighteenth year telling stories at the Winter Solabration. Her motto is: "Give me a place to stand, and I will take you somewhere else." More at www.storysmith.org.
Since 1989, Cara McMillan has led the community singing that kicks off each year's Winter Solabration. This is a premier opportunity for folks from every walk of life to sing some seasonal carols together. In the Winter Solstice Songbook (available at the Solabration) she has created a wide-ranging collection of Christmas and Solstice songs, including pre-christian songs, Chanukah repertoire, and medieval monastic gems guaranteed to cleanse your mind from the tired holiday muzak that's blared at us in the malls.
Cara plays bass and pump organ for the Mountain Echos, a Denver area old-timey group which performs American music from the1850's to the 1950's. She is also the Music Director at the Union Congregational Church in Ward, Colorado, a position that she has held on and off since the 1970's. She currently teaches music as the director of The Voice Studio, where adults can receive coaching in both singing and speech. The non-mainstream music field being what it is, she has wisely kept her day job as a cranio-sacral therapist specializing in therapeutic breath and posture work for performing artists.
From her diverse cultural heritage (Irish Catholic, Scotch Presbyterian, Russian Jewish, and Cherokee), Cara developed a great fondness for Celtic earth-based religious music. Raised on Protestant hymns, she gravitated toward Renaissance music as a young person, and went on to sing back-up for the Mothers of Invention and get a BA in Voice from the University of Colorado. She has gone on to perform a variety of music in many different venues, from Renaissance Fairs to Victorian re-enactments, from jazz and Klezmer to folk and bluegrass.
From this background, Cara is uniquely suited to lead the multi-cultural community singing featured at the beginning of every Winter Solabration.
The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers
Maroon
Bells Morris is affiliated with the Country Dance and Song Society, and
is the oldest of three Morris Teams now dancing in Colorado.The team has
been serving the communities in which they dance for over 24 years, encouraging
all onlookers to share the joy and luck of the Morris
The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers are a diverse group, hailing from the greater Boulder/Denver Metro area and all walks of life. They are always on the lookout for new dancers to join in the fun. Contact Squire Robin Smith at robins@bigfoot.com for more information, or visit us on the web at: http://www.maroonbellsmorris.org
Breathless in Berthoud
(Border Morris)
Morris Dance is an English tradition of dance and music which survives as part of a 
ritual
designed to shake off the dark and gloom of winter and celebrate the coming of spring. While
the origins of the tradition are lost in ancient times, the general opinion is that the
dance is quite old, possibly derived from pre-Christian rites, passed down by word of mouth
(and jingle of bell) from father to son, generation after generation.
Villagers in secluded Bampton, Oxfordshire, say Morris Dancing has been performed at
Whitsuntide every year, except in time of war, for over eight hundred years. Even then,
there are indications that Morris was a custom "from time out of mind."
Shakespeare mentions the dance in several of his works, and one of his star actors, Will
Kemp, was a "Morrice Dauncer."
Border Morris Dancing originated along the border between England and Wales. It is related
to the Cotswold Morris Dancing from the English midlands, but a bit less refined, and danced
with a bit more gusto. Sometimes performed as a means of earning Christmas money, Border
Morris Dancers often wore blackface and passed the hat for donations.
Featured on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Breathless in Berthoud is the only Border Morris
Side in Colorado. We would enjoy astonishing you, and would like to take this opportunity to
inform you that we are always welcoming newcomers to experience this ancient and mysterious
dance form.
For more information, contact Anne or Robin Smith at robins@mesanetworks.net.
The Solstice
Sword Dancers are five members of the Bennett School 
of
Irish Dance: Molly Bennett, Ken Horweige, Bill Bennett, Libby Skipper
and Molly Bodnar. Molly Bennett, Ken and Bill are veterans of seven
years of dancing rapper swords. As exciting as Irish dancing can be,
the intricate interlacings of rapper swords adds a whole new dimension
to their dancing experience. Their practices have become one of the
premier spectator events at the Friendship Irish Dance Center, since
nobody can believe that anyone could extricate themselves from the complex
tangles of steel that are the heart of rapper sword figures. They always
do, however, like so many armed Houdinis, ready to go into the next
impossible tangle and amaze everyone by emerging unscathed.
Bennett School of Irish Dance: http://www.bennett-school.com
I was born in Ithaca, New York. Although I was too young to remember, my parents tell me
that I displayed a real love of music from a very early age. My lullabye was Beethoven's 5th
(I could not fall asleep to anything else!). I began studying the violin when I was seven
years old with the intention of becoming a concert violinist. This was my sole focus for the
next 15 years until I discovered fiddling, and my entire musical world turned upside down!
Suddenly music became about connecting with other people in a joyful way with a community
focus rather than isolating and striving for perfection of form. This discovery challenged
(and continues to challenge) the very foundation I developed in my classical training, and
invited me to set foot on a new and wonderful path of adventurous musical exploration. It
began with Irish, Old-time and Bluegrass jams and festivals, and has grown into my current
livelihood of teaching, performing, recording and collaborating with other musicians from a
diverse range of world music genres.
To date, I have released two solo albums, "It's About Time" and “Joy” . A new album is
scheduled to be released this year. Keep an eye on my website, Sandra Wong Music, for
updates.
http://www.sandrawongmusic.com
Rodney Sauer
Once the youngest person in the world, Rodney Sauer is now too old to be a child prodigy. He
has been playing piano and accordion for square and contra dances up and down the front
range of Colorado since 1986, providing rhythmic support to a variety of bands, duets, and
trios. His musical interests include folk dance music, vintage ballroom dance, and silent
film scoring with the Mont Alto Orchestra.
More at http://www.mont-alto.com
Bill Tomczak
Clarinetist & saxophonist Bill Tomczak relocated to Colorado from New England in recent
years.
"I have been playing primarily for contra dances and dance weekends since the early
eighties. "My primary band is The Latter Day Lizards. We play a very improvised form of
contra dance music and just have a really good time. People keep asking for us, so I guess
we do okay." Come on out and hear Bill's playful, toe-tapping improvisations -- you'll be
glad you did.
More at http://www.musaique.com/index.html
Chris
Kermiet has been calling and teaching traditional American
community
dances for over thirty years and is recognized as one of the finest callers
in the United States. Last year, he received the Heritage Award/2000 Artist
Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts for calling and teaching
traditional American dance, as well as the Westword Best of Denver Award
for Best Dance Caller. During the last ten years, as well as being in
demand as a caller and teacher of traditional dance, he has created choreographies
for a number of performing groups and
theater companies.
Chris grew up with traditional dance. His father, Paul Kermiet, was one of Colorado's premier old time callers, and ran a summer camp on Lookout Mountain where Chris heard the best callers from around the country. He learned from all of them, and it shows in his teaching and calling, his broad repertoire and familiarity with traditional dance, and the way he puts new dancers at ease.
Larry
Edelman has been playing traditional music and calling dances
for more than 30 years. He calls a variety of dance styles including traditional
squares, contras, dances of the southwest, and specializes in community
dances. He is an avid dance researcher and has studied traditional dances
from various regions of the USA and has written books and produced videos
on traditional dance calling.
Larry has traveled widely and has called and played in just about every state in the country as well as the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Russia, Germany, Canada, the Czech Republic, delighting both novice and veteran dancers with his humor, enthusiasm, skillful teaching, knowledge of dance history, and colorful calling. Larry has played and taught at dozens and dozens of dance and music camps and festivals throughout the world.
He currently plays fiddle, mandolin, and guitar with several dance bands including the Percolators, Poultry in Motion, and the Soda Rock Ramblers. He appears on recordings on the Wildebeest, Kicking Mule, D & R, and Yodel-Aye-Hee labels.
I am not particularly drawn to difficult dances. My peak experience as a dance caller is to create a magical moment where the dancer, the movement, and the music are one. I suppose I have a reputation for choosing "flow-y" dances, and to attempt enough clarity of explanation that perhaps no walk-through is needed.
Set dancing of one sort or another has been part of my life since high school. In 1972, in suburban Baltimore, MD, I, along with some classmates joined a Western Square Dance club. By 1973 I had started calling dances. This activity continued and increased through my college years in Pennsylvania and in my subsequent move to the Boston area. By 1983 I was teaching a club square dance class every week, and calling at least two other dances per month.
In 1981, some of my square dancer friends invited me to the Concord (Massachusetts) Scout House contra dance. I wasn't an instant convert, but over the next few years my contra dance activity increased; I was certainly more drawn to the music of contra dance than that of Western Squares. Also in 1981 I began playing the hammered dulcimer. The Celtic and New England music I loved and learned to play went hand-in-hand with my interest in the dance. In 1985 I moved to Southern New Hampshire and found the contra dance community much more friendly than in Massachusetts, and began regularly attending the Nelson (NH) Monday night dance which was an open band - open caller format. An opportunity came in 1986 when a scheduled caller didn't show up at one of the more professional local dances. I filled in with what contras I could remember and a few made up on the spot; I was out of the closet. There was a considerable overlap of my square and contra dancing and calling career, but there was an inexorable shift - I did my last club dance gig in 1987 at the National Square Dance Convention.
Back in the early 1990s I was part of a 4-person New England band called "Storm in the Tea". Amongst us we had two callers, and typically split the calling and playing of each gig. We were drawn to what was at the time a rather untraditional style: instead of playing tune sets Celtic-style or fairly straight, we tried to modulate the energy through a set of tunes to create a definite mood.
I moved to Denver in 1995, and have found this - the land of some of my youth back in the 1960s - to be home. Since my move here, I have been primarily a dance caller rather than a musician up until recently. This too is slowly changing, as I have begun playing with "Southwind" for contra dances during the past year.
Having worn both hats - as a dance musician and a caller (sometimes at the same gig), I feel that forming the dance experience around the music is paramount. As a contra dance caller, I'm not particularly drawn to complexity. If you want that, do club square dancing.
