Guest Artists ’25

The 2025 Harvest Moon Dance Weekend’s guest artists are musicians Mara Shea and Jonathan Jensen, and caller Orly Krasner.

Mara Shea

Mara Shea has been happily playing for dancers since the 1990s—mostly English, Scottish, and contra—and is frequently heard at balls, dance weekends, and concerts in the US, Scotland, and Canada. She has been on the music staff at Pinewoods, TAC Summer School, Blue Ridge, Pawling, and Scottish Weekend, among others, and has played for many Regency and English country cance workshops and balls. With pianist Dean Herington, Mara led musicians’ workshops for the Scottish country dance group in Lisbon, Portugal. She has made many recordings with her contra dance band, The Elftones, as well as with other wonderful musicians such as Dave Wiesler (Heather Hills), Rhiannon Giddens (All the Pretty Horses), and Julie Gorka (In 3⁄4 Time, and several Scottish dance recordings). Mara decided to take a year off from teaching in 2018-19 and earned an MLitt in ethnology and folklore at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Mara lives in Elon, North Carolina, where she teaches Celtic fiddle online, and works as an occasional freelance writer and editor.

For more on Mara, and to listen to some of her music, visit her website, marashea.com. Her solo English country dance music recorded during the pandemic is available on her website and also at marashea.bandcamp.com.

 

Jonathan Jensen

Soon to retire as a bassist in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Jonathan Jensen has been playing piano and various other instruments for English country dancing since 1984. Over the years, he has composed tunes for new dances by such choreographers as Gary Roodman, Sharon Green, and Orly Krasner – nearly 40 of which have made it into the Barnes books. Some of these are all-time favorites in our community, like Candles in the Dark or After Dinner Maggot.

Among his other specialties are writing and performing original songs and song parodies, often topical, which have been enjoyed by thousands on Facebook and YouTube.

Jonathan graduated from Northwestern University, and played five summers with the Grant Park Orchestra, so he is delighted to be returning to the Chicago area, where he has many old friends and fond memories.

 

Orly Krasner

Orly Krasner loves to share the joy of English country dance as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She is a regular part of the teaching rotation in New York City and is a frequent guest for dance evenings, special events, and festivals across the USA and abroad. She called for our Harvest Moon Dance Weekend in 2016.

Orly discovered English country dancing while finishing her Ph.D. dissertation on a totally unrelated musical topic. She apprenticed as a dance teacher under Beverly Francis, Fried de Metz Herman, Gene Murrow, and Paul Ross. In 2011, Orly and Gene traveled to Japan to lead several workshops, arriving just in time for the earthquake! She has trained folk dance teachers in Japan under the auspices of the National Federation of Teachers of Folkdance and taught at Pinewoods Early Music Week. Recent travels took her to the U.K. as guest teacher at the Lichfield and Whitby Folk Festivals, as well as to Paris to study with Cécile Laye.

Intrigued by the idea of music made visible, Orly took up choreography and has published Celebrations, a book of 20 English country dances (with a CD recorded by Reunion, a band that includes Jonathan Jensen). Included there are favorites such as Algorhythms, Salt of the Earth, Longevity, and When Laura Smiles. She is now working on her second collection of original dances (and music). Orly also dabbles in baroque dance and Japanese traditional dance. In “real” life, Orly teaches in the music department of the City College of New York.