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| Performers
at this years Winter Solabration:
Susan Marie Frontczak, Storyteller Cara McMillan, Commmunity Singing The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers
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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. |
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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. |
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| The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers
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 |
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Breathless in Berthoud
The Solstice
Sword Dancers are five members of the Bennett School Bennett School of Irish Dance: http://www.bennett-school.com
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Rodney Sauer
Bill Tomczak |
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| Chris
Kermiet has been calling and teaching traditional American
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. |
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Larry
Edelman has been playing traditional music and calling dances 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. |
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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.
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