Spring Dance Romance (SDR) 2025

Triangle Country Dancers invites you to join us for Spring Dance Romance 2025, our annual spring weekend!

Dates: Friday, April 25th - Sunday, April 27th, 2025

Note our dates! We have shifted back to our traditional weekend at the end of April.

We’ll be dancing to:

Stomp Rocket: Dave Langford, Bethany Waickman, and Glen Loper (contra)

Countercurrent: Brian Lindsay and Alex Sturbaum (contra)

Ben Schreiber and Kendall Rogers (English)

With calling by:

Adina Gordon (contra), Jacqui Grennan (contra), and Melissa Running (English)

We’re dancing in Carrboro again this year - 2024 dancers will be pleased to know the air conditioning system is being upgraded. In addition to our usual full weekend of contra dancing, we are offering an English Country Dance program! We’ll have English in our second space Friday evening and throughout the day on Saturday.

See below for more about our amazing talent! We love these bands and callers and we think you will too.

**Stomp Rocket**

Stomp Rocket features Dave Langford (Latter Day Lizards) on fiddle, Glen Loper (Riptide) on mandolin, and Bethany Waickman (Anadama) on guitar and piano. Coming from in and around New England, the band has played contra dance events all across the country, quickly becoming a favorite at various dance weekends. Dave’s rhythmic fiddle, Glen’s tasteful mandolin and Bethany’s driving DADGAD guitar come together to create an energetic and propulsive sound.

**Countercurrent**

Countercurrent is a powerhouse acoustic folk duo based in Olympia, Washington, featuring driving guitar, lyrical fiddle, harmony vocals, and foot percussion. Bringing the deep drive of dance music to every performance, their arrangements blend both traditional and modern influences with astounding musicianship and fluency. Countercurrent is a genre-bending experience rooted firmly in the traditional music of the Celtic Isles and America; music that lifts you up and charges fearlessly into the future of folk music.

**Adina Gordon**

Adina finds an outlet for her loves of travel, music, dance and silliness by calling and dancing at festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada, creating joy and minor chaos wherever she goes. Combining a voice that makes you WANT to do what she says with a commitment to using that power for good and not evil, Adina calls contras and squares both old and new that cause spontaneous eruptions of joy on dance floors. She counts it as a job well done whenever anyone says, “I don’t really like squares, but I like your squares.”

**Jacqui Grennan**

Jacqui started contra dancing in Los Angeles, CA, in 2009. Since then, she’s taken a deep dive into folk dancing, first as a contra caller, then choreographer, then English Country Dance caller and choreographer, and now taking on the challenge of learning modern western square dancing. These experiences of trying new things at different skill levels has enhanced her ability to consider different ways of teaching and learning. She is known for her clear and caring teaching with a stage presence that is a blend of calmness and dynamism. She knows what dancers want, and knows how to make it happen, seeing herself as the host of a party who wants to help everyone have a good time. When Jacqui isn’t calling or dancing at contra dances and English Country dances around the nation, she likes to host BBQs at her home, learn various musical instruments, hang out with her cat, and work on home projects.

Melissa Running

Melissa discovered she could take folk dance for PE credit in college in the early ’90s, and hasn’t looked back since. A few years later she started playing for dances and then calling English in the Philadelphia area. She now lives in the Maryland suburbs of DC, calls nationally, plays piano for English and Scottish country dancing, and plays the nyckelharpa for pleasure and for Swedish dancing (and a little Norwegian and sometimes English). She is gradually increasing her output of new tunes and dances. In addition to her music and dance activities, she works at linguistic precision as a technical writer and editor, and knits with the zeal of the newly converted.

Ben Schreiber and Kendall Rogers

Ben Schreiber brings a diverse musical palette influenced by his Midwest upbringing and years in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to his contributions to the contra dance scene, Ben is an accomplished English country dance musician, playing for camps, weekends, and local dances across the country.
Kendall Rogers (piano, accordion, guitar) has been playing traditional dance tunes since he started picking them out on the piano at about age 4 or 5. Steeped in the rich Appalachian folk heritage of his native Kentucky, alongside his family’s Celtic/American/Canadian/British/Danish musical roots, Kendall’s playing has also been shaped by classical and jazz training… plus a healthy disregard for the rules.

This weekend will be called using non-gendered terminology.