Anita van Brunschot

Anita van Brunschot's fascination with dance began at the age of 10, with 4 private ballroom dance lessons for her parents' 12.5th wedding anniversary. She has never stopped dancing since.
After ballroom dancing, her great love became Dutch folk dance; she performed with the dance group Pieremachochel for over 20 years internal and international.
Through detours into Swedish, Hungarian, and French dances, she eventually ended up in Balfolk.

Deniece Laanen

Deniece fell in love with the hurdy-gurdy as a teenager. Her part-time job at Efteling enabled her to buy her first hurdy-gurdy. These two passions now come together perfectly in her new group, Fabella, with whom she plays fairy-tale folk music.

For many years now, Deniece has been giving hurdy-gurdy lessons at festivals during the ‘instrument taster sessions’ organised by the Hurdy-Gurdy and Bagpipe Foundation, where visitors can try out a hurdy-gurdy for themselves. She enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for the wonderful world of the hurdy-gurdy with others.

Website: Deniece Laanen

Elena Leibbrand

We’re very happy to welcome Elena Leibbrand again, who always knows how to find the perfect balance between improvisation and tradition in folk and traditional dances. Elena founded her own dance school EléDanse in Belgium in 2018 to pass on to others what makes folk so special to her: the subtle combination of human warmth, exploration of movement, precision and tradition of the form/style, improvisation and playful atmosphere! She has been trained in a range of dance styles since 1995, from traditional to social and contemporary dances. She enjoys both the great potential for improvisation in modern "folk" as well as the specific beauty, precision, and connection to a territory of "traditional" dances. She has a soft spot for bourrées, waltzes, collective dances in general, Poitou, Gascogne etc. Want to know more about her teaching? Check out her website.

Website: Elena Leibbrand

Ineke Janssen Steenberg

The need for a solid foundation in Breton and French dance set Ineke on a path she continues to follow, through countless courses, workshops, and short training programs in Brittany and the rest of France, with numerous Breton and French dance and singing teachers. In 1986, she began giving Breton workshops at the Hurdy-Gurdy and Bagpipe Foundation. Since then, she has given many workshops (in the Netherlands and Germany), ranging from Breton, Breton and French with singing, French Bourrées, and French Balfolk dancing in general, always with attention to the traditional form, style, dynamics, and essence of the dances.

Jolanda Snellenberg & Janniek Wester

After ten years of teaching together Jolanda Snellenberg and Janniek Wester are joining forces once more to bring you lighthearted workshops with a serious note. Having explored a wide range of dance styles, they always return home to balfolk and to each other, where their roots and hearts truly lie. Their teaching focuses on communication in dance—how listening and responding to each other opens up endless possibilities to play with movement, music, and space.

Koen Dhondt

Koen Dhondt started dancing at the age of eleven, and during his studies in Portugal, he discovered folk dance. Since 2002, he has been organizing weekly dance classes and workshops in various cities in Belgium, together with a whole team of experienced instructors, most of whom he trains himself. A few years later, Koen also began organizing folk balls. His passion for quality dance music comes in handy when booking bands, as well as during his DJ sets at practical sessions. All these activities together form Frisse Folk, the organization Koen leads, which makes an undeniable contribution to the flourishing of the Belgian folk dance community.

Over the past 25 years, Koen has given dance workshops in almost all countries of Western Europe. He also advocates for consent on the dance floor and for fair pay in the folk scene, and takes action to optimize the use of the dance floor for maximum dancing pleasure!

Marion Jorissen & Gertjan Jorissen

Marion and Gertjan have been involved for many years with La Chavannée, the music group centered around Frédéric Paris and Patrick Bouffard, which turns the regional music of the Bourbonnais (a region in Central France) into a living tradition. Traditional music and dance with contemporary fun! This has also been the motto of this music group, Chardon, with whom they ran a dance hall for traditional French music in Harlingen for 15 years. Both Marion and Gertjan are dancers, dating back to the folk revival of the 1970s, where they met at the folk dance demonstration group Heating. They are also musicians: Marion on the diatonic accordion and Gertjan on the hurdy-gurdy.

Menno Wester

About the teacher – Menno Wester

Menno: “Why do I play the bagpipes? I have no idea. I wanted that as a child, as a student I went looking and so one day (around 2005?) I was in the studio of a bagpipe builder trying out an instrument. And well, that got a little out of hand over the years.”

And so it began. He liked the folk world and nowadays he give bagpipe lessons, played medieval and balfolk stages, organizes a lot for the Hurdy-gurdy and Bagpipe Foundation, is Stage Manager at Boombal Festival and is responsible for the balfolk concerts in Nijmegen. For many years he has been teaching bagpipes at various festivals during "instrument try-out sessions", where visitors receive a short introductory workshop.

Rian de Jong

Rian de Jong has been teaching balfolk since 2010 and has built up extensive experience over the years with both beginners and advanced dancers. In addition to regular class series for Balfolk Utrecht and previously in Eindhoven, Rian currently focuses primarily on giving workshops. Conscious movement, playing with variation, and dancing with awareness are central to her classes. Rian draws inspiration from various dance styles (including modern dance and tango) and enjoys working with themes that invite experimentation, feeling, and deepening. Her goal is to provide dancers with tools that allow them to dance more freely, lightly, and with greater connection—both with themselves and with their partner.

Saskia Sportel & Arthur Abeille

Arthur Abeille & Saskia Sportel have been dancing and teaching Balfolk since they were teens, and teaching much of that time. They enjoy both couple dances and collective dances, sharing good moments and meeting nice people. In their workshop you can expect technique, fun and a challenge, whether it's in the intricacies of connection in a couple dance, or the different traditional steps of a chain.

Wouter Kuyper

Wouter Kuyper (1978) has been involved with folk music since he was 10 years old. First with the recorder, then with the bagpipes, and subsequently, since the age of 15, with the diatonic accordion.
He has been teaching at his own diatonic accordion academy for about 20 years, is one of the regular teachers at the Hurdy-Gurdy and Bagpipe Foundation, and has given many workshops at various festivals. Playing for dancers is his specialty, so that will also be the subject of the workshop.