Hey Days Staff 2025
Hey Days Teaching and Music Staff
Hey Days Sound Staff
Hey Days Committee
- Bridget Whitehead, Co-Program Director
- Brooke Friendly, Co-Program Director
- Loretta Guarino-Reid, Camp Manager
- Alex Bradley
- Rebecca King
- Alice Williams
Joanna Reiner Wilkinson (PA) returns to Hey Days by popular demand! She has taught English dance for over two decades. In addition to being one of the leaders of the Philadelphia-based Germantown Country Dancers, her calling has taken her from Amherst to Ann Arbor, from NEFFA to Hey Days, from St. Croix to Vancouver, and other points abroad, including many sessions for the Country Dance & Song Society (CDSS) and CDS Boston Centre at Pinewoods Camp. While known for her clear calling and instruction, Joanna loves teaching workshops for ECD callers, and workshops that explore ECD technique, new dances, and how people learn and remember dance choreography.
Joanna will teach ECD and an ECD Callers Workshop.
Rachel Pusey (WA) has danced since her teens, starting with barn dances, leveling up to English, taking to Scottish with the zeal of a convert, briefly digressing into salsa, and more recently catching the contra bug. She loves bringing new dancers "into the fold", to find the same dancing joy and community she treasures, and came to teaching as part of that mission. She has learned from mentors like Bruce Hamilton, benefited from the structure of RSCDS training, enjoys brainstorming with other callers, and is endlessly grateful for the patience and support of dance communities in St Louis, the Bay Area, and Seattle where she now lives. She believes that being serious about dancing involves laughing a lot and invites you to join her!
Rachel will teach ECD.
Juliette Webb (TN) started dancing in California as an adult, after a long time away from years of childhood dance classes. After moving back to Tennessee, she started dancing with Nashville Country Dancers, where she soon became an organizer and teacher of English country dance. Juliette has organized, participated in, and taught demonstrations and performances for historical sites and cultural festivals. She is on the board of the Country Dance and Song Society, where she serves on the Executive Committee, chairs the Nominating Committee, and co-chairs new board training. Juliette is the current Program Director in training, and she will be the program director for 2026 Hey Days. Some people believe that Juliette doesn’t actually live in Tennessee, because they see her at local dances, dance weekends, and dance weeks across the country.
Juliette will teach ECD and facilitate the Callers Open Mic
Jan Elliot (MA) Jan Elliott has an active life in the worlds of traditional music and dance. She directs and dances on the Vineyard Swordfish, a longsword team which has performed at a number of gatherings, most regularly at New York’s Half Moon Sword Ale and at NEFFA (New England Folk Festival). Jan plays concertina for other ritual English sword and morris dance teams, including Clownfish Rapper, Orion Longsword, and Pinewoods Morris Men. She also plays concertina and recorder for English country dance and teaches morris and sword dance at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod. She has been on staff at many Pinewoods sessions, and served for 12 years on the board of Pinewoods Camp, Inc.
Jan began her recorder studies at age 3. Her first teachers were Ruth Guillard, student of Bernard Krainis (and wife of a founding Pinewoods Morris Man), and school music teacher and early music specialist Patricia C. Brown. Later she explored advanced baroque repertoire with W. Britt Wheeler at Wesleyan University, earning a BA in music and education. Her MA thesis from UCLA focused on dance/music relations, and she happily straddles both worlds. She currently maintains an active private studio and teaches music at elementary and middle school levels. She directs the Woods Hole Recorder Consort and performs with Ensemble Passacaglia, a quartet specializing in medieval, renaissance and world music, and Courante, a baroque ensemble that has performed across Cape Cod and at the Boston Early Music Festival. Jan has been a guest artist with numerous early music groups including Oyez!, Philidor, the Solstice Singers, Falmouth Chorale, Mastersingers-by the Sea and Proteus Consort.
Jan will teach longsword, border morris, and play for ECD.
David Kessler (WA) has always had people around him who considered singing and humming "just part of what you do", and he took that to heart - whether in a pub, on a sailboat, biking down the street, loading hay, washing dishes, stacking chairs, or sitting around a campfire. David grew up in New England and moved to Seattle in 2013. He is a co-founder of The Boston Chantey & Maritime Sing, The Single Malt & Song Society, and Ballard Ballads. He's on the planning committee for Raise The Rafters (a traditional song weekend) and the board of Maritime Folknet. David is a program manager, stage manager, and a general logistics nerd. He is Co-Producer of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. He occasionally performs with "Strikes A Bell" or as half of "Kessler & Perasso", but you're more likely to find him at the various pub sings, chantey sings, or contradances around the Seattle area. You'll find more information here.
David will teach singing and lead the gathering.
Renée Camus (CA) is a dance historian (as well as an ECD caller and choreographer), focusing primarily on social dance of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Renée has taught vintage ballroom dance, including many different styles of waltz, at camps such as Pinewoods, Terpsichore’s Holiday, Cincinnati Vintage Dance Week, and Newport Vintage Dance Week. She taught ballroom dance in the Washington DC area, including at Northern Virginia Community College and the Ballroom Dance Company, and taught a class of 19th-century waltz variations, such as the redowa, polka mazurka, polka redowa, and zingarella, in Pasadena, CA.
Renée will teach a waltz class.
Shira Kammen (CA), a multi-instrumentalist (primarily violin, vielle, and viola) and vocalist, has spent most of her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music. She is a favorite at dance camps and events around the country. She performs with many ensembles, among them the English Country Dance bands Roguery, Night Heron, and the Whoots.
A member for many years of the early music ensembles Alcatraz, Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Folger and Newberry Consorts, Anonymous 4, the Boston Camerata, the Balkan group Kitka, and the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals. Shira is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to performance on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Morocco, and Japan, and on the Colorado, Rogue and Klamath Rivers. Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years. Shira has recorded many albums in a variety of styles of music and has played on several television and movie soundtracks, including 'O', a modern high school setting of Othello and ‘’The Nativity Story’. Some of her original music can be heard in an independent film about fans of the work of JRR Tolkien. The strangest place Shira has played is in the elephant pit of the Jerusalem Zoo. You will find more information at shirakammen.com.
Shira will play for ECD.
Jim Oakden (CA) 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 but a few).
A dancer himself, he specializes in playing for dancers in a bunch of bands for ECD, contra, morris, Irish, Breton/French, Greek, and Bulgarian. He has been on staff at myriad dance camps throughout the country.
Jim plays with a number of English Country Dance bands, including Roguery, Persons of Quality, and The Whoots.
Jim will play for ECD and Longsword.
Chip Prince (CA) is a lifelong pianist who also dabbles in euphonium, melodica, choral music, and Barbershop-style singing. His main gig used to be playing keyboards for (and occasionally conducting) Broadway shows in New York and on the road, but now he is retired from all that and living in Palm Springs. Chip first began folk dancing in 1975 as a freshman at Brigham Young University but didn’t discover English and Contra dance until 2000 in New York City. He played three times at Dance Flurry as a member of the English band Hudson Crossing; the NYC-area Contra bands he played with included The Three Wise Guys, Gig Economy, Grand Picnic, and Brooklyn Swing Ensemble. Since moving to the west coast, he has scratched his ECD/Contra itch by playing occasionally at dances in San Diego and Pasadena, as often as possible with fiddler extraordinaire Audrey Knuth Jaber.
He was on staff at CDSS English Week at Pinewoods in 2018, and was a hit at Hey Days in 2019. We are happy to welcome him back.
Chip will play for ECD.
Lisa Scott (OR) is an accomplished pianist and teacher. Coming from a musical heritage, she earned a Bachelor of Music at Lewis and Clark College. Lisa studied the art of accompaniment at the University of Southern California and in New York. She began Scottish dancing, soon earned her preliminary teaching certificate, and then learned to play for Scottish dance. Lisa has played piano for Scottish dance in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Scotland, and New Zealand.
Many years ago she fell in love with English country dance and music and has been playing for dance weeks and weekends, workshops, and balls ever since. Lisa's sensitivity to dance rhythms and her lyrical style make her music a joy for dancers.
Lisa will play for ECD.
Michelle Masek (Levy) (CA) plays violin, viola, and vielle, and has performed for over 30 years. She studied classical viola and old-timey fiddle/banjo at Brown University, Medieval vielle with Shira Kammen, and earned a Masters in Ritual Chant & Song from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (University of Limerick).
Michelle loves the spontaneity of folk music and fiddles for both Contra and English Country dances and has been on staff at BACDS Fall Frolick and Hey Days.
For two years she toured with improvisational world music ensemble Cantiga. Michele has performed throughout the country with an eclectic variety of ensembles and vocalists, including Celtic singer Abby Green, Ozark-mountain singer/songwriter Maia Archote, and Algerian Amazigh (Berber) songwriter Moh Alileche. She has performed internationally with an eclectic variety of ensembles, including Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI, Keltia Productions, and The Boston Camerata. Recently she performed the show ‘Stars & Stones’ for Cístermusica Festival (2019) in Portugal with tenor Wolodymyr Smishkewych: a program of Irish, British, French, German, and Iberian Troubadour repertoire. During her time living in Limerick, she was privileged to perform with the Limerick Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Limerick Orchestra, and to teach violin/fiddle/viola & voice at Redemptorist Centre of Music and Mid-West Vocal Academy & Music School.
Michele will play for ECD and teach Camper Band.
McKinley James (QC) is a cellist living in Montreal. She soloed with the Filarmónica del Café in Colombia in 2022 and the Champlain Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017. She has played with the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra, Middlebury College Orchestra, McGill Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and the New England Conservatory Symphony. McKinley also toured in China with her piano trio in 2018.
McKinley is a founding member of the band Night Tree, which was named the New England Conservatory’s Honors Ensemble for 2016-2017. Awards for this title included a sponsorship from NEC, a headlining performance at the historic Jordan Hall, and a year of working with Winifred Horan, fiddler and co-founder of Irish super-band, SOLAS. Together they toured throughout the US, opened for Solas in Portsmouth Music Hall, and played in Jordan Hall, Caramoor Festival, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Public Library, and Rockwood Music Hall. They released their debut album in 2017 and toured in Europe in 2018.
She has taught at Maine Fiddle Camp and at New England’s premier fiddle festival Fiddle Hell, and played for English and contra dances and weekends in Canada and the US.
McKinley will play for ECD and teach a music workshop.
Rebecca King's (CA) classical piano training took a detour when she began playing for folk dances. She found that English Country Dance music was the perfect combination of classical chamber music with the improvisation of jazz. She plays for dances throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and has played in England, Italy, and throughout the US. She has recorded 3 albums with the trio Persons of Quality, including Farnicle Huggy for Andrew Shaw, played on Dances from the Greenery for Sharon Green, and released a solo piano CD and book of her own compositions titled Nearer & Farther. Listen at rebeccakingmusic.com
Rebecca will play for ECD and teach a music workshop.
Laura Kuhlman (OR) is the musician scheduler and performer for the English Country Dance community in Portland. She performs with the Portland-based Oregon Renaissance Band and the newly formed 19th century group, the Fireside Social Orchestra. She also teaches flute, saxophone, recorder, early double reeds and renaissance bagpipes both at workshops and in her home studio. If there is not an instrument in her hands, Laura can be found roaming the hills and dales of Oregon on her beloved bicycle.
Laura spent many years in Chicago, Illinois as a freelance musician. From Bach to Broadway, she has enjoyed partnerships with several early music ensembles including the Burgundian Ensemble, Masqued Phoenix, and the Too Early Consort. She founded and led The Milwaukee Renaissance Band from 2009-2014. Laura is currently music director for the Portland Recorder Society and the Recorder Orchestra of Oregon and is past President of the national American Recorder Society. She has taught at many early music workshops around the US and in Canada and Switzerland. Laura also performs with the lively medieval band, Orchestra of the Moon.
Laura will play for ECD and teach a music workshop.
Hey Days Sound Staff
Christopher Jacoby (CA) plays accordion, mandolin and guitar for Contras, English, and Scottish country dancing. He has performed in many bands and combinations over the years. Christopher's non-dancing related hobbies include (but are not limited to): singing, sourdough and fermenting, Digital Audio & Audio Engineering, training computers to understand music, and workshop facilitation. He has been the sound engineer for BACDS Fall Frolick dance weekend and numerous local dances.
Alicia Cover (CA) will be an assistant sound engineer. Alicia grew up dancing ECD, contra, and display dance. She has worked Fall Frolick with Christopher, was sound assistant for the Mad Robin Ball, and often does sound at contra dances. She occasionally runs sound for PEERS events, and is the regular sound person for the Berkeley Thursday night and Experienced ECD.
Hey Days Committee
Bridget Whitehead (ON) hired the program staff for 2025 and has turned over the remaining work to Brooke Friendly so she can enjoy life with her new baby.
Bridget fell in love with English country dancing in Toronto, Ontario in 2005 and began organizing and calling in 2009 when she founded a bi-weekly English country dance in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. Bridget was a regular caller and workshop deviser in Ashland, Oregon for several years and recently moved back to Ontario with her husband Kyle Hardman. She has called for local dances in Ontario, Missouri, and Oregon, as well as at Hey Days in 2019, 2022, and 2024, and at Youth Dance Weekend (Vermont) and Fall Frolick (California) in 2023.
Brooke Friendly joined the committee in 2007 as program director and has remained involved ever since, in charge of the website and other marketing. She was program director again in 2017-19, including the transition from Bishop's Ranch to SSU. Brooke has been on staff at Hey Days several times, and taught for weeks, weekends, and festivals across North America, England, and Australia. She has taught dance using global/positional language and strategies since 1981 and as a result of the pandemic now teaches a variety of online workshops for callers. Happily retired from arts education and management, her other loves are theatre improv, gardening, hiking, birding, and singing, dancing, and playing with her grandchild.
Brooke will finish Bridget Whitehead's term as Program Director for 2025 as we navigate a new facility at Green Mountain Retreat.
www.brookefriendlydance.com
Loretta Guarino-Reid is our Camp Manager. A long time co-manager of the Peninsula English Country Dance in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been on the Hey Days committee in various roles since 2009, serving as manager, treasurer, and most recently, running the bookstore.
Alex Bradley is our Hey Days Registrar. He is a VFX artist and illustrator based in Los Angeles. To get away from the screens, exercise, and connect with others, he loves nothing more than English country dancing. With his wife, Renée Camus, he performed in the Centuries Historical Dance company, a highlight of which was joining a production of The Merry Widow, graduating from dancing in one scene to being full-blown singing cast members overnight. They have also danced professionally at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They are owned by two cats.
Rebecca King is our site liason. She joined the Hey Days Committee as Camp Manager, just in time for our pivot to an online camp. Her former job as a classroom music teacher and band director with the Sonoma Valley Schools gave her a lot of experience in large groups, patience, and working towards goals, which she hopes to put to good use at Hey Days in June. Besides playing the piano, Rebecca enjoys hiking and the great outdoors.
Alice Williams joined the committee in 2024 as our new treasurer. Alice first fell in love with English Country dancing in 1999. She began calling in 2003 and has been a caller and organizer of Santa Barbara's English Country Dance ever since. She has managed the Santa Barbara Winter Dreams Ball since its inception in 2014. Retired as an office and business manager, when not dancing she enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, sewing, quilting, gardening and hiking.
Lise Dyckman joined the committee in 2024 as our new bookstore/auction manager. Lise started dancing (folk, contra, & country dances) ‘way back in 1974, & has not stopped since. She has taught and called in Philadelphia, New York City, and (since 1995) California’s Bay Area, focusing mostly on ECD with forays into the social history of dance in Europe & the U.S., dance reconstruction, folkways, and more recently bal folk and composing modern ECD. A research librarian, she originally trained as a historian -- which shows up in some unexpected contexts (like serving dance community organizations).
Renée Camus has been organizing and calling English country dance for many years, and currently serves as caller, committee member, and webmaster for Culver City English Country Dance. She has taught various styles of dance, including folk, ritual, historical, and ballroom dance, in schools and camps around the country, including Pinewoods and Hey Days 2021 Virtual camp. She has written several English country dances (published on her website), one of which won a dance-writing competition in 2022.
Juliette Webb joined the committee in 2024 as our Program Director in training. She will be the program director for the 2026 camp. Juliette lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is a dance organizer, teacher, and caller of English Country Dance with the Nashville Country Dancers. Juliette is a member of the Board of the Country Dance & Song Society, where she serves on the Executive Committee,chairs the Nominating Committee, and co-chairs new board training. She travels regularly to dance weekends and weeks from coast to coast.
Alisa Dodson is an ECD dancer, organizer, caller and choreographer, and has been a member of BACDS since the early 1980s. She has been on Ball committees and has served as a series dance manager. Alisa has been on the Mendocino/Gualala/Hey Days committee for many years, taking the position of programmer, bookstore honcho with Allen Dodson, and camp manager. She returns as manager-in-training for the 2026 camp.