Andy Wilson returns to teach stilting this year. 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!
Anne Bingham Goess is excited to be back at Family Week as a fiddler and song leader. She plays regularly for Irish, English Country and Contra dancing around the Bay Area (with Raven Hill and the Raggedy Annes, among other bands), and performs with Erica and Friends (fresh from the KVMR Celtic Festival and a KALW radio spot). In December of every year she dons some kind of wonderful flowing costume for the Christmas Revels, where she assists in the music direction and tries not to trip over her skirt. The rest of the year she leads the singers of the Revels Solstice Ensemble at various seasonal and promotional performances, where the skirts get shorter but the head wreaths considerably larger.
Bethany Ewers (storyteller, preschool) Bio coming soon…
Courtney Tolhurst (preschool, stilt walking) Bio coming soon…
Craig Johnson has been to almost every Family Week, and has also played piano and accordion for dancers since 1982. He plays with for community and Celtic dance at SF’s Dickens Fair, performs with the Dogwatch Nautical Band, and is a regular musician for San Francisco’s Cotswold and longsword teams, Goat Hill and Ring of Cold Steel.
David Brown (guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle) Bio coming soon…
David James has spent time in western swing bands, symphony orchestras, pop/rock bands, and ECD/contra dance bands. He’s the musician for Wild Wood Morris (Border) and Rising Phoenix Morris (Cotswold), and a member of the ECD/contra dance band Whirled Peas. David has spent the last 20+ years as a kindergarten through 6th grade classroom music teacher in southern California public schools.
Emily Janssen (crafts) Bio coming soon…
Jeffrey Spero has been playing piano and singing since he was five years old. At a young age he discovered an affinity for popular music and developed his style emulating musicians like James Taylor, Elton John, and Bruce Hornsby. In his 30s, he brought his rhythmic style to American and Celtic folk and dance music and now travels around the country playing dances, concerts, and festivals with bands such as Syncopaths and Rhythm Raptors. In addition to editing and music, Jeffrey is a contradance caller and choreographer whose dances have been enjoyed all across this country and overseas.
Julie James was an international folk dancer in her youth. She later found English country dance, then morris, and never looked back. In 2000 Julie formed Wild Wood Border Morris, where she focuses on teaching complex, fun dances with an emphasis on both precision and exuberance.
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Kalia Kliban (CA) has been part of the Bay Area dance community since the mid-80s, performing and teaching morris, longsword, American clog, English clog, contra, and English country dance. Among her other useful talents are the making of excellent pipe-cleaner sculptures and the juggling of a wide variety of supermarket produce. Her clear and humorous teaching style has gotten feet tapping at camps and gatherings in California and beyond, and she’s been part of the Family Week community since 1996.
Kelly Graham (kids’ dance, improv) Bio coming soon…
Kelsey Hartman has been calling contra and family dance since her debut at the San Francisco contra in 2013. She can be found calling dances all around the Bay Area and beyond. She is also a member of Twisted Sisters Rapper Sword Team. To her, the world of folk music and dance seems like home! She holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Theater and spends her year teaching middle schoolers medieval world history and English. For the last two years her summer break has taken her to the East Coast to tour as a caller, and she’ll be back there again in late July.
M’Gilvry Allen is a musician and producer from Sebastopol, California. He tours as a fiddle player and utility hitter in several indie projects, while his solo music blends folk instruments, modern electronic production, and multilayered vocal harmonies into a kaleidoscope of familiar sounds. In 2019, M’Gilvry and some friends built an earth plaster music studio in a remote part of Oregon, where he produced his debut album, In My Garden. M’Gilvry’s work can be found at his website, mgilvryallen.com, on patreon at patreon.com/mgilvryallen, and on all major platforms as @mgilvryallen.
Nicolas Babineau (fiddle, guitar) Bio coming soon…
Nick Cuccia brings his sound expertise once again to Family Week. 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.
Rhonda Cayford has been an avid contradancer for over 40 years, starting in Boston in 1978 and having the good fortune to move to San Francisco in 1980, just as the dance scene was taking off here. She discovered rapper at BACDS English week in 1986 and it has been her passion ever since. She is the founder of a womens’ rapper team called Twisted Sisters, and was a long-time member of Swords of Gridlock. She has taught Rapper, Longsword, Cotswold, and Northwest Morris at camp. This year she has taken on the role of camp programmer and feels privileged to be entrusted with this role. It has been a delightful task, and she can’t wait to share this awesome staff with you.
Sharon Green has been calling and choreographing English country dances since 1993. Since the pandemic, her current major dance activity has been co-leading (with Kalia Kliban) the Oddly Even Sundays English dance on Zoom, as well as calling for BACDS’s virtual Fall Frolick, Hey Days, and Family Week. A regular attendee and occasional staff member of in-person Family Week, she looks forward to returning this summer to Monte Toyon with grandson Santi, now 15.
sTan 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.
Yaelle Azoulay (French Canadian dance) Bio coming soon…