Teachers

Linda Mae Dennis

Linda Mae
Dennis Linda Mae Dennis age 3 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 to 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 has taught workshops in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, and Alberta, Canada, and regularly teaches Scottish Country Dancing in Portland, OR, and Stevenson and Vancouver, WA, and is active in both the Portland and Southwest Washington State Branches of the RSCDS.

Lea Maiolo

Lea Maiolo started Scottish Country Dancing at the age of 13 when her dad spotted an ad in a newspaper and thought that folk dancing would be something she would enjoy. She had done ballet and tap as a child, and had continued to try that on and off through the years, but Lea was immediately taken with Scottish. She started in David Brandon's class in South Pasadena. Lea and her dad soon branched out to several classes a week, later including highland class with Fred DeMarse. Lea joined the Los Angeles Branch demonstration team a year or two after she started dancing, and began teaching the Eagle Rock class of the San Gabriel Valley Branch occasionally a year or two after that. She got her preliminary teachers' certificate under Mary Brandon's tutelage in 2002.

Lea graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in 2003 and began working as a costumer on various commercials, films, and TV shows. In 2004 Lea met her now-husband Jim Maiolo, when he moved to LA from Pennsylvania, having been dancing at Swarthmore College. She also started teaching the Eagle Rock class full time. In 2009 she got her unit 4 and 5 completed, tutored by Doug MacDonald.

When Jim was offered a job at Microsoft, they moved to Washington, and Lea now teaches the Redmond class on Sunday nights. She also occasionally runs a demo group for a very silly fantasy fair in Bonney Lake. Lea and Jim have a one year old daughter named Jasmine.

Musicians

Cynthia Soohoo

Cynthia Soohoo, a native of Portland, has enjoyed performing and writing musical arrangements in classical and popular genres since childhood; but it wasn't until 1997 that a chance opportunity to explore Scottish fiddling gave wings to her lifelong attraction to Celtic music, a love now also shared by her family. Eventually relinquishing the fiddling to her two passionate fiddler sons, she became the pianist-arranger for the family band, which plays for Scottish cultural events and Scottish country dancing.

Cynthia is also very active in music outside of the Celtic world, maintaining a private piano studio, directing a church orchestra, leading a string quartet, teaching violin classes, and performing traditional and contemporary music for various occasions. Cynthia, husband Stephen and their two young daughters are enthusiastic Scottish country dancers.

Maggie Hannahs

Maggie recently moved here from Minneapolis. She dances with the Portland group, and plays her fiddle.

Organizers

Kathlleen Mintz

If you have any questions, comments, or wish to request further information, please email Kathlleen yww2013 at yahoo dot com

Darrick Wong

Darrick grew up in Silly Cone Valley and moved to the Portland area after college to work on Linux. It was in Portland where he met the Scottish Country Dance group, and has been folk-dancing with them and other local groups ever since. Occasionally he can be found dancing at Irish cèilidhs, or arm-twisted into going to a Contra dance. In the past few years, he's branched out to dance with other SCD groups on the West Coast, such as San Francisco and Seattle.

If you see a problem with the website, email Darrick: djwong+yww2013 at djwong dot org