Linda Mae Dennis was born and raised in Alberta, Canada, where she first ventured into Tap at age five, and Irish dancing at age seven. After family moves to Southern California and then Houston, Texas, (where she got a largely unused degree in Biology) she started her adult life in Austin, Texas. By taking every dance class she could find, and after a short stint at Motorola, she became a professional Tap dancer in 1983, and toured with Austin on Tap Dance Theater for several years.

When she retired from touring, she continued to Tap with the "in town" company, as well as teach ballet, tap, jazz, and gymnastics to children, as well as taking up Irish Dancing, which included hard shoe dancing. And somehow she morphed from a middle manager to a graphic artist.

In 1996, a friend invited her to a Scottish Country Dance class. She watched the class and enjoyed the music, and went back the next week, and the next, and the next. After partaking liberally of the vibrant Scottish Country Dance Culture in Texas, attending lots of workshops and dances and starting a Tap class for Scottish Country Dancers, she had to get out of the heat and moved with her husband, Patrick, to the Pacific Northwest.

She attended her first TAC Summer School in 2003, where she got the teaching bug. After a lot of hard (but supremely fun) work, she received her Prelim in 2005, and her Full Certificate in 2007. In the meantime, she took some Cape Breton Dance lessons, and started a "Celtic Tap" class in Vancouver, WA. (“Celtic Tap” is an amalgamation of Cape Breton, Scottish and Irish Step Dancing, and American Tap, all done to Celtic music.) She also learned to be a Flourishing Tenor Drummer, and plays regularly with Fort Vancouver Pipe Band, Kells Pipes and Drums, and the Skamania Pipes and Drums.

She teaches Scottish Country Dancing in Portland, OR, and in Stevenson and Vancouver, WA, and is active in both the Portland and Southwest Washington State Branches of the RSCDS.

I started dancing in the Delaware Valley in 1983 while a student at the University of Delaware. I took my Preliminary exam and began teaching in 1987, married Line Farr (met in the certificate class) in 1988, and received my Full in 1993. In 1989 Line and I started a Scottish class at Swarthmore College, which I still teach weekly. I have also taught various other basic, intermediate, and advanced classes in the Delaware Valley where we live.

My dancing philosophy is that the main point of dancing is enjoyment (typically, fun). Of course, enjoyment varies by perspective: one person's enjoyment of executing a leap in bar four of six hands round might be seen as impeding the enjoyment of five who wish to enjoy sublime synchrony. Therefore dancers must agree on general guidelines for the form of the dance to enable enjoyment for all. I endeavor to dance and teach within the guidelines provided by the RSCDS.

My philosophy of teaching dance is that teaching technique (including teamwork, phrasing, handing, carriage, sociability, and footwork) is the way to ensure dancers' maximum enjoyment of the dance. Different dancers have different capabilities, but all of us can reach to become better dancers. Improvement leads inevitably to increased enjoyment on the dance floor.

Furthermore, it is my goal to present all these aspects of technique in ways that are fun, exciting, and challenging for as many people and in as many ways as possible.

I started dancing in 2003, just before I graduated from Swarthmore College. I’m really excited to be teaching at Youth Weekend West because I had the great pleasure of starting to dance as a student. In fact, I went to my very first dance class mostly out of peer pressure—all of my other friends were always dancing, leaving me all alone on the weekends! I was in love with Scottish dance from the first moment, however, and I’ve been dancing anywhere from two to five nights a week ever since.

After only a year dancing at Swarthmore, I moved to California for grad school at Caltech and continued dancing with the San Gabriel Valley Branch of the RSCDS. I started teaching in the fall of 2005 so that I could bring Caltech students into Scottish dancing. Bringing the joy of Scottish dance to young people was what drove me to become a Scottish dance teacher and it has continued to be my passion ever since. I taught the weekly Caltech class for almost four years, until I moved to the Seattle area. When I moved away, I was pleased and proud to be able to pass the class on to one of my students.

I finished my Units 1-3 (what used to be the RSCDS preliminary certificate) in 2009, and I hope to complete my full certificate sometime soon. I met my wife, Lea, while Scottish dancing (she is also an SCD teacher, and a better one that I), and we are looking forward to the birth of our first child any day now. Since the organizers asked me to write this bio ridiculously early, our child will probably already be talking by the time you are reading this!

Finally, I’m extremely happy to be teaching at this workshop with Terry Harvey, who was my very first SCD teacher and the coolest guy around.

Andy leads the "Reel of Seven" Scottish dance band, and is the music coordinator for the San Francisco Branch of the RSCDS. Reel of Seven has just released their first CD: "Dance for Joy" recorded in 2008 at the Kim McGarrity Memorial Ball at Asilomar.

Andy began Scottish Country Dancing in Berkeley in 1977 and earned his preliminary pass teacher's certificate in 1984, and one day hopes to find time to train for the full certificate. He began studying classical piano as a child, and started playing for Scottish Country Dancing in 1984 with the encouragement of Kim McGarrity and Barbara McOwen. He plays regularly for dances throughout the US and Canada with various fiddlers, including Deby Benton Grosjean and Calum MacKinnon, and has also played for dance tours and workshops in Scotland, Shetland, Orkney, and New Zealand with fiddler John Taylor. Andy is featured on several albums of SCD music, including "Steppin' Out" and "LIVE" with John Taylor, "March Hare" with Susan Worland, "The San Francisco Collection, Vol. 2" with many local musicians, and "The Devil's Quandary" with Deby Benton Grosjean. He has been on music staff at Pinewoods and was honored to have been invited to teach piano accompaniment at the Valley of the Moon Scottish fiddling school for several years.

Andy is married to Sherryl Fawx (also a dancer and musician); they live in Santa Clara, California. In his free time, he works as an aerospace engineer specializing in simulation, guidance, and control design of flight vehicles.

I got into Scottish fiddle through a misunderstanding that arose out of my interest in Scottish punk and alternative bands. It was a happy misunderstanding that got me into Scottish Country Dancing by the age of 15, into teaching Scottish Country Dancing by the age of 21, and getting my preliminary certificate to teach at St. Andrews, Scotland at the Summer School of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society in 1993.

I have been playing for dance, performance, theater, and for fun since around 1991.

I have played for dance and performance events in Croatia, France, Scotland, most of the Eastern and some of the Western United States.