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The Mountain View class has an excellent teaching staff.
Each of our teachers has a deep and abiding love for Scottish country
dance and enjoyment of the dance is the chief goal of the Mountain View
class. All of the teachers hold certificates from the Royal Scottish
Country Dance Society (headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland). The certification
process is quite rigorous and assures that instructors are both accomplished
dancers and thoroughly grounded in style, technique, and teaching skills.
Lin Pettengill
Alan Twhigg
Armin Busse
Paula Jacobson
Originally
from
Cardiff , South Wales, Lin began Scottish Country
Dancing in
Miami
Florida when she and her husband Don first moved to
the
U.S.
in 1974 and were unable to
find an English Country Dance class in the area. There was no looking
back!
Since 1975 she has lived in the
San Francisco
Bay
area, except for five years in
Corvallis,
Oregon and six months in
Singapore
, when Don's job
moved. While in
Corvallis
, Lin decided to become a
Scottish dance teacher, obtaining her Full Certificate in 1997. Ever since
her family moved back to the
San Francisco
area in 1998, Lin has been an active San
Francisco branch teacher. She joined the
Mountain View
teaching roster in 2008 and
enjoys teaching all levels of classes from the basics with beginners to
the finer points with more advanced dancers. She especially likes high
energy dances with lots of pas de basque.
Lin dances everywhere she goes and very much enjoys the
friendships and camaraderie of Scottish Country Dancing. She has been a
performance dancer with Red Thistle Dancers for more than 30 years. Her Scottish dancing high points
are with the Red Thistle Dancers in the
Czech
Republic
in 2002, and with the
Singapore St. Andrew’s Society team at the 1996 Jakarta Highland
Gathering!
When not dancing, Lin enjoys attending Broadway type
musicals, community theatre events and Gilbert & Sullivan operas
(particularly if Don is in the cast), visits to the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art, reading mysteries, and spending time with her family,
especially her three grown-up children. Oh yes, she’s also pretty busy
with her day job in advertising sales!
Contact
Lin
Alan's involvement in Scottish Country Dancing goes back to the late 1970's
and he's been a Mountain View class teacher since 1987. Scottish country
dance first caught his interest in college; but the seeds were planted
much earlier. When he was a youngster, his parents were Scottish country
dancers and often took him to bagpipe concerts and Highland Games. (Perhaps
the Scottish music, imprinted at so early an age, stimulated the MacNeil
and MacGregor genes in his heritage?)
In addition to Scottish country dancing, Alan is an accomplished Highland
dancer and performs frequently in public. He does both Scottish country
dance and Highland dance with the Red
Thistle Dancers, a performance
group based in Palo Alto. Alan frequently travels to Scotland to attend
dance training schools, and broaden his knowledge of the culture.
Alan has also taught the San Jose and Stanford classes and he's a
frequent guest instructor with other Bay Area groups. His experience
includes teaching Scottish country dance at workshops across the Western
US and Canada.
Elsewhere in life Alan works as an information developer in the computer
networking industry. Other interests include foreign languages, literature,
travel, and history.
Contact
Alan
Armin Busse, formerly of Bielefeld, Germany, brings a
wealth of teaching experience to the Mt. View class.
Though a frequent
visitor to the Bay Area in the past, Armin, now lives and works in
the Bay Area. Armin began teaching the Mt. View class in spring, 2000.
Armin performs with the
Red Thistle Dancers,
a non-profit organization performing the dances
and music of Scotland throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and at
international festivals around the world.
Contact Armin
In
1991, that I came across a little notice in the newspaper: “Come Scottish
Country Dancing, Thursday nights in Santa Cruz”. I went to that class, and
on the very first night I knew I had found my passion in life. A few
months later, I enrolled in the Mountain View Class, dancing in both
classes for four years. I have been performing with the Red Thistle
Dancers since 1995, including tours to Norway in 1998, and the Czech
Republic in 2002. I passed my preliminary test for teaching SCD in 1996,
and gained my full certificate in 1999, both in St. Andrews, Scotland. I
co-taught the Soquel Class with Bob McMurtry from its inception in 1996
until its demise in 2007, and joined the teaching staff of the Santa Cruz
Class that summer. I started the Santa Cruz Youth Class in January 2008,
and took our little group to their first Children's Ball last
May.
Scottish Country Dancing has my heart and soul because,
well, it just has everything.
There
is as much challenge as anyone could want, yet dancers of a wide range of
ability are welcome in the set. The people are friendly, supportive, and
accepting. The music is superb. The dances are exciting, elegant,
powerful, and evocative. The social aspects are full of fun. What more
could one possibly ask?
In my
everyday life, I worked for our local PBS television station, KTEH, as a
Master Control Operator (that’s the person who physically runs the TV
station on the air) for over twenty years. I am now retired from
television, and work as sound engineer for the Scottish Dance community
while continuing my teaching of Scottish Country Dancing to all who
will.
Contact Paula
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Last updated: August, 2007
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