Winter Dance Weekend is scheduled for Fri-Sun Feb. 16-18, 2018 at the Pioneer Park Dance Hall.
Expect a full weekend of dance, music, workshops and good company. You can expect contra dance, squares, waltzes and possible English Country Dance.

Registration is optional, but encouraged and you can save a few bucks too!

Registration Link

Draft schedule is here. Of course, it’s draft until the event is over. (:-)

Julie Metcalf, Max Newman and Mary Wesley
Our guest musicians hail from Boston: Julie Metcalf on fiddle and other things and is joiniing her frequent musical partner Max Newman on guitar and foot percussion. Julie has never been here before, Max grew up in Fairbanks, but now lives in Boston. Mary Wesley is a resident of Vermont and a favorite of ours. She was last here a couple years ago for Dance Camp North.

I first heard Julie play some years ago in Concord, MA and really liked her style and is a nice person to boot. According to a Fiddle Hell event, Julie can often be spotted at contra and English dances in the Boston area, either on stage playing fiddle or on the dance floor. Julie holds a degree in Violin Performance from Berklee College of Music. She has played Celtic chamber music on viola with the Folk Arts Quartet and Mexican music with Boston’s Mariachi Palenque. She currently performs with Agnostic Fiddle Insurgency, The Gig Hunters, and The Bone Folders. Julie has taught at many previous Fiddle Hells, going back to the old days in Groton. Julie is also an accomplished jawharp player; she plays jawharps from around the world, as well as other unusual instruments including the marxolin and mouth bow. I had no idea. Here is Julie some years ago playing one of her tunes, Goodman Dan

Everyone likely knows Max, who left Alaska to attend Harvard and never moved back home. With a degree in Government, he’s been playing contra dances professionally ever since and has played an active role in promoting contra dance with CDSS and organizing the Youth Dance Weekend and a host of other contra events in the New England area. One of his college essays many years ago was on the community of contra dance here in Fairbanks. He grew up here and brings his experience, good vibes, and more back home.

Mary has been intimately involved in promoting contradance and calling for quite some time. She has worked for CDSS, the mothership of contradance for the United States, started caller training events on a regular basis. She calls contras and squares and perhaps more that I don’t yet know.

Hope to see you on the dance floor!

Here are a few images from the event.