Author
Conservationist
Animal Adventurer

Sy Montgomery, who has been described as “Part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson” (The Boston Globe), shares her program Off the Beaten Track. It is an overview of the journey she has made from animal-loving writer to world explorer—all thanks to the teachers she’s met along the way. There’s a Buddhist saying: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Montgomery’s job as a writer is to recognize those teachers. They are all around us, but many turn out to look quite different from the typical classroom teacher: mountain gorillas, tarantulas, golden moon bears, pink dolphins, Amazonian shamans, man-eating tigers, in classrooms as vast as the Great Gobi of Mongolia, to the cloud forests of Papua New Guinea, to the Amazon. www.symontgomery.com.

Acclaimed Performance Poet
Education Advocate

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement. He is one of the few people in the world to have no job other than that of “poet.” Articulate, accessible, passionate, and downright funny, Mali studied drama in Oxford with members of The Royal Shakespeare Company and puts those skills of presentation to work in all his performances. He was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and was the “Armani-clad villain” of Paul Devlin’s 1997 documentary film SlamNation. His poem “What Teachers Make” has been viewed over 4 million times on YouTube and was quoted by the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman in one of his commencement addresses.

Mali is vocal advocate of teachers and the nobility of teaching, having spent nine years in the classroom teaching everything from English and history to math and S.A.T. test preparation. He has performed and lectured for teachers all over the world and has a goal of creating 1,000 new teachers through “poetry, persuasion, and perseverance.” He is working on his first inspirational book entitled What Teachers Make, a short, passionate defense of teachers drawing on his own experiences, both in the classroom and as a traveling poet.  

www.taylormali.com.  

Students visit Dublin School’s Perkins Observatory and several other “stations” around campus to explore aspects of our universe through different lenses. Led by Observatory Director Jonathan Weis and other faculty members.

Hypnotist

Back by popular demand!

Stage hypnotist and magician Peter J. Mamos captivates audiences around the country with his magic and stage hypnosis performances. Mamos combines audience participation, comedy, music, and mystery to create his entertaining presentations. Pete first began entertaining with magic in 1991. He obtained his undergraduate degree in psychology from Syracuse University and his master's degree in developmental and educational psychology from Boston College.   While attending Syracuse University, he discovered stage hypnosis. After graduation, he attained his certification in hypnotherapy from the American Board of Hypnotherapy in 1996. Pete has performed over a thousand shows across the country for educational institutions, corporate functions, and private events. He has entertained throughout the Caribbean and Mexican Riviera as an entertainer for Carnival Cruise Lines. Pete is a lifelong resident of New Hampshire and lives there with his wife and three children. www.petemamos.com. 

A one-woman show by actor/writer/arts educator
Vickie Tanner

Running Into Me tells the compelling story of Vickie's struggle to defy the odds and succeeding, despite a misguided upbringing in the poor, urban neighborhood of Compton, CA. She interweaves reenacted interviews of today's urban youth throughout her story, taking us on an odyssey into the minds of young people while painting a vivid portrait of her own remarkable journey.

The performance includes an engaging talk back with students afterward.

Dance & Music in Collaboration 

Donlin & Jenny Foreman, dancers, present work with long-time collaborators composer Andrew Waggoner and cellist Caroline Stinson. The artists will talk about the creative and collaborative process, how multiple artistic visions are met, with presentation of special dance/cello duet composed in response to Hurricane Katrina, linking to this year’s community book, Zeitoun.

DONLIN FOREMAN (Dancer/Choreographer) A 20-year veteran of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Foreman was coached and directed by Martha in all her major male roles. He performed with Eliot Feld Company, Jacques d'Amboise National Dance Institute, and La Scala Ballet; and has staged works for NJ Ballet, Ice Theatre of NY, La Scala Ballet, and North Carolina Dance Theatre. As co-founder/director/choreographer of Buglisi/Foreman Dance (1993-2005), Foreman choreographed 25 ballets and presented six seasons in NYC at the Joyce Theater, two seasons at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the America Dancing series/Kennedy Center, the Melbourne International Festival and other international venues. He performed at the White House for President Reagan and holds numerous honors, with critical and professional acclaim for his performing and his choreographic work. He served as Professor of Professional Practice in the Dance Department of Barnard College, Columbia University from 1994-2010,  and for two years chaired the Dance Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts. 

JENNY EMERSON FOREMAN (Dancer)Graduated from Barnard College with a degree in Dance/Theater and earned her MA in Individualized Study, focusing on dance, oral tradition, and pedagogy from NYU’s Gallatin School. As principal dancer for Buglisi/Foreman Dance, she was instrumental in the creation of fifteen new works, acclaimed "a sensuous oracle" (Newsday) and "...exceptional" (NY Post). In addition to being Company rehearsal director, she assisted in staging and coaching signature repertoire on NJ Ballet, Marymount Manhattan College, Juilliard School, Barnard, and Purchase College. Emerson toured the US with the Graham Ensemble, receiving the Coca-Cola Award for Artistic Excellence. Emerson is co-founder of On Common Ground creating dance educational and performance collaborations. She was on faculty at Barnard College and the Graham School from 1999-2010; has been guest faculty at SUNY Purchase, Ailey, the Usdan Center for Creative and Performing Arts, and the Neighborhood Playhouse.

ANDREW WAGGONER (Composer & Violin)  was born in 1960 in New Orleans.He grew up there and in Minneapolis and Atlanta, and studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University.  Called “the gifted practitioner of a complex but dramatic and vividly colored style” by the New Yorker, his music has been commissioned and performed by numerous professional symphonies and ensembles including: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Saint Louis, Denver, Syracuse, and Winnipeg Symphonies, the Cassatt, Corigliano, Miro, and Degas Quartets, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the California EAR Unit,  Ensemble Nordlys, of Denmark, and Ensemble Accroche Note, of France. He has received grants and prizes from ASCAP, Yaddo, The New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, New Music Delaware, the Eastman School of Music and Syracuse University. He has also been awarded the Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award from Composers Inc., in San Francisco, has been nominated for four prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.  In addition to his concert works, Waggoner has also composed extensively for theatre and for film, and is an active violinist. He was a founding Director of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music in Vinalhaven, Maine, and is currently Composer-in-Residence at the Setnor School of Music of Syracuse University, teaching regularly also at NOCCA Riverfront in New Orleans.

CAROLINE STINSON (Cellist) is praised for her vibrant lyricism, fresh interpretations and expressive performancesand sought after by orchestras and fellow musicians nationally and abroad for solo and chamber music concerts of both traditional and contemporary repertoire. Ms. Stinson's performance credits include Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, the Museum of Modern Art's Summergarden Series in New York, Boston's Gardner Museum, Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian in the United States; Germany's Koelner Philharmonie, Switzerland's Lucerne Festival and France's Cité de la Musique and Theatre at Rennes, in Europe, and the Centennial Centre and Winspear Halls in Canada. A champion of contemporary music, Ms. Stinson has joined forces with the acclaimed Lark Quarte+, renowned for its commissions of new works by some of today's foremost composers, including Aaron Jay Kernis, William Bolcom and Jennifer Higdon.  Her debut CD, Lines, will be released this spring on Albany Records. Caroline is a teaching assistant to Joel Krosnick at the Juilliard School and is on the cello and chamber music faculty of the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University.