Val Medve is known for her selection of English country dances both vintage and new. Her calling style is clear, easy to follow and laced with good humor.
Val’s interest in dance began with Polish folk dancing when she was a young girl in southwestern Connecticut. In the early 1980s, she caught the contra dance bug. She soon added many other traditional dance genres, performing with Gwiazda Polish Folk Dance Ensemble, Reel Nutmeg (an ECD troupe), Sleepy Hollow Morris (a Northwest Morris team), and The Green Mountain Volunteers (a troupe that represented the U.S. at international dance festivals in Canada and abroad).
Val Medve was an avid, dyed-in-the-wool contra dancer when she started English country dancing in the mid-1980’s in Hartford, Connecticut with the performing group Reel Nutmeg. She was soon converted and has been dancing and teaching ECD ever since. Now based in the Burlington, Vermont area (since late 1989), she’s on a committee that organizes a regular ECD series there and helps run their annual ECD weekend called “Across the Lake” which takes place in June.
She has also called at many special events including NEFFA (New England Folk Festival), the Flurry Festival, Adirondack Dance Weekend, Pinewoods Labor Day Weekend, Playford to the Present (P2P) Ball in Pasadena (CA), Stockade Assembly, Binghamton (NY) Ball, Whately (MA) Ball, Spencerville (ON) Ball Weekend, Strafford (VT) Ball, Champlain Valley Folk Festival, as well as Jane Austen events and numerous dances around the Northeast USA.
