Tom Roby has been teaching English Country Dancing since his undergraduate days, and is well-known as an ECD leader on both coasts. Currently he is one of the three main callers for CDS Boston Centre (calling regularly with Bare Necessities and Friends). He maintains a busy schedule teaching at festivals, dance camps, and weekends. Credits include CDSS English and American weeks at Pinewoods, Mainewoods Dance Camp, LCFD (gender-free), NEFFA, BACDS, and Cascadia (Seattle). For five years he taught an intro ECD course, “Dance with Jane Austen” for first-year students at UConn.


Tom works hard to foster community, communicating the skills needed to dance better and to assist others gracefully, and helping everyone appreciate the amazing diversity of styles and music represented by ECD’s 374-year history. Dancers at all levels appreciate his lively and efficient teaching, clarity, and sense of humor. His dance choreography, “Sunlight through Draperies”, is well-known across many ECD communities.


Tom is also an accomplished leader and teacher of Balkan folkdances and of couple dances from Transylvania and Scandinavia. He frequently teaches the lesson for Boston Mostly Waltz.

Judy Silver has been teaching international folk dancing since 1973 in the Toronto area. She focuses on the oldies – classic dances from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Israel and elsewhere. For decades she has co-run the Toronto International Folk Dance Club (a weekly in-person class) and she founded Village Folk Ensemble – an international folk dance performance troupe that performed at folk festivals and special events. During the COVID pandemic Judy started a highly successful, weekly, virtual folk dance group (still ongoing) that has drawn hundreds of regular participants from Canada, the US, Australia and beyond. She has also led dancing for various virtual dance groups including the Global Folk Dance parties & after parties, Stockton parties, and others.

Judy completed her doctorate at the University of Toronto in counselling psychology. Her doctoral dissertation explored the therapeutic effects of folk dance and exercise participation on participants’ self concept, body concept and attitudes toward the ethnic groups represented by the dances taught. She is currently a faculty member at the University of Toronto where she won an award for distinguished contributions to teaching in 2022.

Now that the pandemic is behind us, Judy has started to offer in-person dance workshops in Canada & the US. Participants enjoy her breadth of knowledge, inclusive approach and joyful, easy to follow instruction.