Mady (– rhymes with “lady”) has been dancing since age 3 and folk dancing since age 13. In college and graduate school, she enjoyed not only international folk dancing but also Scottish country dancing, contra dance, and belly dancing, and continued with international, Scottish, and English country dancing on a regular basis until the pandemic (even doing it on Zoom), and is happy to be resuming dancing and teaching post-pandemic.

After joining or trying to start folk dance groups everywhere she lived, in 1988, Mady founded Fermilab International Folk Dancing, at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the far western suburbs of Chicago. She led that group and directed the associated performing group for 32 years, until the pandemic ended it. She facilitated and now is one of the teachers of the RSCDS Chicago Branch. English country dancing (ECD) is a more recent dance delight; with regular calling since 2006, and founding, with Tammy Bretscher, Chicagoland English Country Dancers, she has expanded the presence of ECD in the Chicago area.

Mady has taught folk and traditional dancing at schools, churches and in local festivals, presented classes to teachers on incorporating folk dancing into their curricula, and has been invited as a guest teacher of international dance, Welsh folk dance, and English country dance at various weekend workshops in the Midwest and even farther afield. She has taught Welsh dancing at the Bitterroot Highland Games in Hamilton, Montana, and called ECD for the Sharpes Assembly in Florida, the St. Louis Playford Ball, and for Ann Arbor, MI, and Berkeley, CA, experienced ECD.

In addition to dance teaching, Mady can’t seem to get away from being a dance event organizer and publicist. For the past 21 years, she has been a director of the yearly upper Midwest international folk dance workshop weekend known as June Camp. She is also on the committee that runs the Midwest Scottish Weekend (and formerly organized the Chicago Scottish Weekend). She is a member of the national Steering Committee which runs the Pourparler, a yearly conference for community dance leaders and teachers, and is also involved in various capacities with the National Folk Organization. She has also recently become a member of the research committee of Stockton Folk Dance Camp, helping with their extensive syllabus projects.

When dance events were hampered by the pandemic, Mady found new friends and connections in assisting with the online English dance presentations of Symmetry ECD (of which she is now the vice president) and other international folk dance online offerings such as Stockton Winter Weekend. She is committed to helping these continue as the pandemic recedes, since online dance opportunities have been a lifeline for so many.

Mady is pleased to have written several dance tunes and devised a small but growing number of English and Scottish country dances, and intends to do more of this.

Mady has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Cornell University. Still, her life has worked out to make dancing and volunteer dance organizing her career. 

Tammy is a dancer, caller, singer, actor, and orchestral musician. Growing up in a household of music and dance of many kinds, it was only natural that her older siblings came back from college burning to teach the international dances they had picked up—even to their little sister (who eventually ended up teaching Israeli dances at a synagogue and choreographing for productions in local college and professional theater while in in high school). During her first summer at University of Chicago, Tammy happened upon a group of people dancing outside on campus; she took one look and decided that she needed to join whatever it was, right that minute. That group was led by Paul Ross (now of Country Dance*New York and Country Dancers of Westchester) and their focus was English Country Dance, with occasional forays into contra and Scottish Country Dance. Tammy became a faithful member, soaking up as much as possible from Paul’s instruction.

A few years later, after Paul left for New York (CD*NY and CDW) to study under the mentorship of Fried de Metz Herman, ECD was harder to find in Chicago. However, Tammy managed to keep up sufficiently to put together a demonstration group for the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (held in Chicago) as a partner-performance to her recital of English vocal music from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

After this longish dry spell, Tammy discovered and promptly joined Mady Newfield’s Fermilab International Folk Dancers, dancing with their performing group for recurring Romanian and Welsh events, among others. Very soon after her arrival, she urged Mady to start an ECD group as well. Mady had serendipitously had similar thoughts, and so the Chicagoland English Country Dancers met at Fermilab for the very first time in January 2006.

Since then, in addition to sharing regular calling with Mady at Chicagoland ECD, Tammy has also been engaged to teach Shakespeare classes, college dance clubs, and  madrigal choirs. She has also led English dances from private Jane Austen balls to Doctor Who Zombie birthday parties, served as choreographer for Chicago-area stage productions of Sense and Sensibility and (with Mady) Emma, and worked remotely as dance consultant for a new production of The Ballad of Maria Marten at the Rose Theatre in Kidderminster, UK.

Tammy received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Chicago where—when she wasn’t dancing or playing in the orchestra—she wrote her thesis on the moral education of Jane Austen heroines Elizabeth Bennet and Fanny Price, and served as JASNA Vice President and lecturer for Chicago-area high schools.