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.