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Principle Performers

2006 Christmas Revels: An Early American Winter Celebration

For more information, contact: 202-723-7528; info@revelsdc.org

Mary Alice and Peter Amidon are versatile musicians and gifted teachers who are dedicated to traditional song, dance and storytelling. The Amidons are equally at home doing a concert of stories and songs for adults or children, calling a contra dance for adults or a community dance for all ages, leading harmony singing workshops with adults, or doing an elementary school residency of singing, storytelling or traditional dance. They perform and teach at schools, festivals, teacher conferences, and folk camps throughout the United States. They have recorded nine albums of songs for all ages. The Amidons recently released their songbook and accompanying CD: Beatitudes - Amidon Choral Arrangements.

Storytelling is a regular feature of Peter and Mary Alice's performances. Peter has been the featured storyteller at Pinewoods, Lady of the Lake, and other traditional song and dance camps. Mary Alice and Peter are both featured tellers at the annual Vermont Storytelling Festival. Peter Amidon has called contra dances and community/family dances all across the United States and in the United Kingdom. Peter is in increasing demand as a caller at contra dances and festivals throughout the Northeast. He is known for his clear, efficient and beginner-friendly walk-throughs, for his dynamic and musical calling style, and for his ever-fresh repertoire of consistently flowing and elegant contra dances and squares. Mary Alice Amidon combines singing, storytelling, movements, singing games and dance in her sessions with children and in her teacher workshops. She has a particular gift for enhancing picture books with background music, singing, storytelling and movement.

Dovie Thomason’s passion for sharing her Lakota and Kiowa Apache heritage through traditional and original stories began when she was ten years old and a teacher taught her history class that “Indians are extinct.” This desire to give people a clearer understanding of the often misunderstood, often invisible cultures of the First Nations of North America has brought this former high school teacher and university professor to powwows and Indian Centers throughout North America to the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London as well as castles in Belgium and cottages in Ireland.

Her well-crafted stories are “word-weavings” of personal memories, untold histories and ancient tales that speak profoundly across cultures and boundaries to the modern heart. Dovie’s gifts of humor, enlivening imagination and astonishing vocal transformations helps her audience become “comfortable with discomfort” and the journey toward true respect and reconciliation. Dovie appeared in the film The Call of Story: An American Renaissance and has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR), BBC in England and RTE in Ireland. She is chair of the Viola White Water Foundation for Native Culture and Education.

Steve Hickman (fiddle), one of the truly great performers of fiddle music, has electrified audiences for close to thirty years. Besides playing for numerous bands in the Washington, D.C. area, Steve has been a featured fiddler for the Fiddle Puppets and Evening Star, touring throughout the world. In addition to his fine fiddling and stage presence, Steve is renowned for his hambone antics (not to mention his handlebar mustache). Steve occasionally lives in King George, Virginia but spends much of his time traveling to play at dance workshops, festivals and camps throughout the country and the world. He is one of the world's leading authorities on the arcane art of hambone.

John Devine (guitar) from Berkeley Springs, WV is in constant demand as rhythm guitarist in a host of popular contra dance bands around Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia. He has been a staff member at Buffalo Gap, and plays at dance workshops, festivals and camps around the country. He frequently teams up with Steve Hickman to play for dances.

Charlie Pilzer (bass) is a resident of Takoma Park, MD. Charlie's career has included performing, producing and engineering award-winning Celtic, folk and acoustic music. For over 25 years he has toured and recorded as a bass player with Spælimenninir, a Scandinavian folk group based in the Faroe Islands. He is well known as a dance musician (piano and bass) for New England and Scandinavian folk dances and has toured from Maine to Alaska. He has been on the staff at weeks for the Country Dance & Song Society and the Christmas Country Dance School at Berea College and has served as program director for the CDSS Family Week program at Pinewoods Camp. He is also is a founder of Azalea City Recordings. Charlie is the Artistic Associate for Music for Washington Revels and served as co-Music Director for their 2003 Christmas Revels production and directed several years of May Revels.

About the Washington Revels

An established non-profit cultural institution in D.C. for over 20 years, the Washington Revels is dedicated to reviving and promoting communal, seasonal celebrations. Featuring the music, dance, drama and folk tales of a particular place and time, each Revels production enables audiences of all ages to experience age-old cultural traditions that affirm and support our shared community. The Washington Revels is one of twelve affiliated organizations across the country whose parent organization, Revels, Inc. in Watertown, Massachusetts, was formed by John Langstaff, concert baritone, music educator and prize-winning author.

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