The fourth annual Occidental World Music & Dance Festival is a wonderful, day-long event with workshops and performances. Celia will be leading a song circle, and invites you to bring a song or two to share.
Celia will be teaching a weeklong harmony singing workshop at Lark Camp. Starting with simple rounds, you’ll learn tips and a wee bit of theory for singing harmony. Explore the schedule (currently still for 2025) to get an idea of the embarrassment of workshop riches and check the link frequently to see what’s in store for this year—2026!
With Will Wheeler, Charlie Hancock, and Anne Goess—and sharing the calling duties with Elisabeth Reeves. Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 7:30. LOCATION: Christ Church East Bay, 2138 Cedar St. (near Oxford), Berkeley. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Information at nbcds.org.
The annual KVMR Celtic Festival will feature a Singing Session from 2:45 - 4:00pm, both on Saturday and Sunday. Check out the schedule line-up of musicians and events. Celia will be among a lovely cast of singers leading songs for you to enjoy with your voice, or just your ears. Ticket info here.
Band: Rebecca King (piano) and Rodney Miller (fiddle). Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: Monroe Hall, 1400 West College Ave, Santa Rosa, CA United States. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Go to nbcds.org for more details.
Band: Rebecca King (piano) and Rodney Miller (fiddle). Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: Unitarian Universalist Church, 240 Channing Way in San Rafael, CA. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Information at nbcds.org.
With Persons in Black (David Wright, Susan Jones, & Clark Smith). Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: Unitarian Universalist Church, 240 Channing Way in San Rafael, CA. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Information at nbcds.org.
Band: Rebecca King (piano) and Rodney Miller (fiddle). Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: St. John’s Episcopal Church – Petaluma, 530 C Street, Petaluma, CA. Information at nbcds.org.
Band TBA. Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: Monroe Hall, 1400 West College Ave, Santa Rosa, CA United States. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Go to nbcds.org for more details.
With Will Wheeler (guitar, feet), Dorsey Crocker (bass), and Lisa Miklos (flute). Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: Monroe Hall, 1400 West College Ave, Santa Rosa, CA United States. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Go to nbcds.org for more details.
With Rebecca King on piano and John Berger on fiddle. Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: Unitarian Universalist Church, 240 Channing Way in San Rafael, CA. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Information at nbcds.org.
Celia will be calling a Contra Dance in Nevada City with a great band: Full Tilt (Lonna Whipple, fiddle; Ann Meigs, accordion and keyboard; Roke Whitson, banjo and keyboard). The dance will be held at the Nevada City Odd Fellows Hall, 212 Spring St, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.
Click on address above for a Google Map for Directions, etc.
ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED CALLER’S WORKSHOP HAS BEEN CANCELLED. See you at the dance!
Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: The Methodist Church at 270 N Pine St, Ukiah, CA 95482. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Please check dance sites for more information.
Celia will be the Contra Dance instructor at Lark Camp this year, and she’ll be leading a children’s song circle. Located in the Mendocino Woodlands, this camp has been running for 46 years (founded in 1979) and features music, dance and song from around the world. TONS of details can be found here. There are 80 instructors, each teaching two workshops, and every evening there are dances and performances. It’s a rustic, magic, unparalleled educational camp that’s family friendly. Check it out!
With Raven & Goose (Corwin Zekley and Grace Fellows) playing live for us! Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:00. LOCATION: St. John’s Episcopal Church – Petaluma 40 Fifth Street, Petaluma, 94952 United States. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Please check dance sites for more information.
Join me, Rebecca King & Rodney Miller for a Contra Dance at the Tomales Town Hall. The event is an annual fundraiser for the renovation of the historic Town Hall, and you can be part of the fun! The Town Hall is in the wee town of Tomales: 27150 Main Street / CA Hwy 1. There’ll be Chili & Cornbread and a no host bar—and dancing to live music. Tickets $20! Tickets available at the door and on Eventbrite.
Celia will be hosting an in-person song circle at Occidental World Music and Dance Festival. More details to come, but information can be found on the Occidental Center for the Arts site.
Learn a new superpower—just bring your voice! Libby and Celia will teach three different ways to create harmonies that suit YOUR voice and vocal range. We’ll show you how to use chord theory, intervals and some excellent phone apps to help you understand how to work alone, or with other folks. Hint: If you’re in a band, this is perfect for you and your bandmates! Teens are welcome.
This workshop is being hosted by the Napa School of Music, located in north Napa at the corner of Trancas Street and Big Ranch Road, above Mechanics Bank. There’s plenty of free parking! Bring a friend and get lunch afterward! The workshop is for adults, but teens are welcome, too.
SPACE IS LIMITED so email Celia to reserve your place. Cost: $50.00, payable via PayPal to @SongAndDanceGirl or by cash or check at the door.
Sounds too advanced? We’ll also be teaching a beginning level workshop on Saturday, May 10!
With Magic Reelism providing our music! Details here. Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30!
Learn a new superpower—no previous harmony singing required—just bring your voice! Libby and Celia will teach you how to sing something different than the person sitting next to you—and have it sound amazing. We’ll begin with a round and learn some songs with simple harmony parts.
This workshop is being hosted by the Napa School of Music, located in north Napa at the corner of Trancas Street and Big Ranch Road, above Mechanics Bank. There’s plenty of free parking! Bring a friend and get lunch afterward! The workshop is for adults, but teens are welcome, too.
SPACE IS LIMITED so email Celia to reserve your place. Cost: $50.00, payable via PayPal to @SongAndDanceGirl or by cash or check at the door.
Need something more challenging? We’ll also teach an advanced level workshop on Saturday, May 31!
Family dances are back on fourth Sundays—with live music and easy to learn dances for all ages! Visit the North Bay Country Dance Society website (NBCDS. org) website for more details. Wischemann Hall, 465 Morris Street, Sebastopol. Suggested donation: $5 – $10 per adult, $10 - $20 per family.
Family dances are back on fourth Sundays! Live music for this dance will be provided by Janette Duncan (fiddle), Roxanne Oliva (accordion and flute), and Beth Christian (fiddle). See below for details, and you can visit the North Bay Country Dance Society website (NBCDS. org) website.
Would you like to create your own harmonies to sing? This workshop is for folks who feel comfortable singing established harmony parts, but who want to learn how create their own harmonies to fit their vocal range.
BTW, this workshop is great for folks who want to understand how to work out vocal harmony parts for their bands, and several instrumentalists have told us they use our approach in this workshop (which corresponds to our YouTube Lesson #5) for their instrument playing—harmony is harmony whether your instrument is your voice, or some other instrument! So come for the singing, but leave with a skill you can use for all your music endeavors!
Hosted by HOOT! Cost: $50/person…or attend all three workshops in the series for $125. TICKETS ON SALE STARTING IN OCTOBER AT HOOTEXCLAMATIONPOINT.COM
This is the third (and last) in a series of three vocal harmony workshops at The Hillside Club in Berkeley.
You joined us for our beginning workshop, so now it’s time to sing some more complicated harmonies. What? You didn’t attend the beginning workshop? NO PROBLEM! If you have a little experience, just join us anyway at The Hillside Club in Berkeley!
Hosted by HOOT! Cost: $50/person…or attend all three workshops in the series for $125. TICKETS ON SALE STARTING IN OCTOBER AT HOOTEXCLAMATIONPOINT.COM
This is the second in a series of three vocal harmony workshops.
No previous harmony singing required—bring your voice! Learn how to sing something different than the person sitting next to you by singing simple rounds.
This is the first in a series of three Saturday workshops that will be at The Hillside Club in Berkeley; there will be an intermediate, and an advanced level workshop on each of the following two Saturdays.
Hosted by HOOT! Cost: $50/person…or attend all three workshops in the series for $125. TICKETS ON SALE STARTING IN OCTOBER AT HOOTEXCLAMATIONPOINT.COM
Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: The Methodist Church at 270 N Pine St, Ukiah, CA 95482. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Please check dance sites for more information.
Join us for a dance party for the whole family—all ages welcome! Caller Celia Ramsay will teach easy-to-learn dances from American and British Isles folks traditions, accompanied by live music by Craig Johnson (piano), Erik Hoffman (guitar), and Anne Goess (violin). This event is co-sponsored by North Bay Country Dance Society, and BACDS Family Week. Includes a sing-alone, juggling, snacks, an “instrument petting zoo,” and stilts!
Suggested donation $10/adult or $20/family.
With Shira Kammen, Jim Oakden, and Charlie Hancock playing live music for us! Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. Please check dance websites for COVID-related requirements. LOCATION: Unitarian Universalist Church, 240 Channing Way in San Rafael, CA. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)!
I will be among the Cavalcade of Callers for this event. In appreciation and in celebration of Kirston Koths’ contribution to this community we present this special evening.
Doors open at 6:45, time for socializing and sharing stories from 7:00–7:30, Dancing 7:30–10:00pm, $10–$20 sliding scale or pay what you can
The year was 1980 when Kirston Koths (1948–2024) moved to the Bay Area. A new caller from Boston, he started a 2nd Friday contradance in Berkeley. Contradance was new to the area—the only regular dance was in Palo Alto. BACDS did not yet exist, and when it formed Kirston became member #2. Kirston organized, managed, and called his Berkeley dance for 25 years, eventually asking BACDS to take it on.
By then contradancing was flourishing in the Bay Area, with dances in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Mill Valley, Santa Cruz, and many nearby cities. Contradancing took hold in the Bay Area, as in much of the country, due to the efforts of the early organizers, and Kirston was one of them.
Kirston wrote at least a dozen dances. “Nantucket Sleigh Ride,” with its distinctive dip-and-dive figure, was wildly popular in the ’70s in New England. His most memorable West Coast dance, and the namesake of tonight, is “Triskaidekaphobia”.
For more information: bacds.org/events/kkdance/, kirston-dance@bacds.org, rhonda@cayford.org, or (510) 982-1347.
Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: The Cottage at 1707 Alameda Avenue near the corner with Grand Street (south of 'The Home of Truth' church, at the corner). Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Please check dance sites for more information.
Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. Please check dance websites for COVID-related requirements. LOCATION: Live Oak Grange, 1900 17th Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)!
With Patti Cobb & Valerie Rose playing live for us! Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:00. LOCATION: St. John’s Episcopal Church – Petaluma 40 Fifth Street, Petaluma, 94952 United States. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Please check dance sites for more information.
With Rebecca King and Rodney Miller playing! Community dances offer a beginners’ lesson 30 minutes before the start of the dance; if you’re new to Contra Dance, come at 6:30. LOCATION: The Methodist Church at 270 N Pine St, Ukiah, CA 95482. Bring your feet (and comfortable shoes)! Please check dance sites for more information.
