Teachers & Musicians 2010

Our Teachers

Ellie Briscoe discovered Scottish Country Dancing in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1977, after some years as a folk dancer. She took her Teacher's Certificate at the TAC Summer School at St. Catharine’s in 1982, and has taught at workshops across North America and in Japan. Her favorite aspects of SCD are the music and how it drives the covering and phrasing, the teamwork, and the way people grin when they “get it.”

Ellie is a library manager at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, and likes indoor cats, outdoor birds, scuba diving, and singing.

Rod Downey began dancing in New Zealand in 1990 and obtained his certificate in 1998, having also danced for a year in upstate New York. He has taught at various schools including the New Zealand Summer School, TAC Summer School, and many workshops around New Zealand, as well as classes in the US. He has two books of dances "The Cane Toad Collection" and "They Stole My Wife from Me Last Night" which can be obtained free from his home page: http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~downey

His whole family dances and his eldest son plays in Peter Elmes Band. Rod is a professor of mathematics and computer science when he is not dancing.

Our Musicians

Dave Wiesler has built a national reputation for his rhythmic and innovative piano playing since 1993. At home in a huge range of styles, Dave plays for events ranging from studio work to concerts to dances of many flavors—contra, swing, vintage, couple dance, English and Scottish country dance. He has given concerts at venues including the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, the Washington Folk-Life Festival, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and for two years he led popular performance tours on antique pianos for the Smithsonian Museum's Piano 300 Exhibit. Dave has played at festivals and camps across the country as well as in Canada, Scotland, and England.

He is a prolific composer of tunes and songs, and is also a capable guitarist and singer. He lives in Newark, Delaware, with his wife, two young sons, and two cats.

Mara Shea is a fiddle player, fiddle teacher, writer, and editor. She prefers Celtic music, and dance music is what she loves best—Scottish country dances, English country dances, and Irish set dances. She also plays for contra dances, parties and concerts with the fiddle-guitar duo, The Elftones.

Mara also offers private lessons and coaches students in the fundamentals of fiddle playing, introducing them gradually to the techniques that make the music sound more Irish or Scottish, danceable, lyrical, and most important, fun to play.

Before she started playing music full-time in 2002, she was a technical writer and editor, working for 25 years with various organizations and corporations like the World Health Organization, Texas Instruments, Becton Dickinson, and Square D / Groupe Schneider. She is now a freelance technical writer on the side (she plays more music now!), and also writes articles and essays just for fun. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.