Performers’ Dance Biography

They began their professional dance career spending several years teaching general folkdance classes for the Mountaineers, and giving workshops at area churches, colleges, elementary, junior, and senior high schools, and the Northwest Folklife Festival. Various factors influenced them to study the dance of one culture in depth, and their heritage of Pennsylvania Deutsch (Djana) and German-Swiss (Mark) decided them to found a performance group to research and demonstrate the traditional dance, music and costumes of their Germanic heritages.

1984 they began their performing career as a duo, presenting traditional Alpine dances as Zwei Alpentänzer and period Italian dances as Due Ballerini. After gaining experience at venues ranging from restaurants, schools, shopping malls and private parties, they founded die Alpentanzgruppe in 1985 to train dancers and present longer programs showcasing their growing repertoire of Austrian, South German and Swiss village dances to the larger audiences available at major regional festivals. Mark & Djana directed die Alpentanzgruppe for 13 years, building it into the Northwest’s most respected Alpine dance troupe, and bringing dance programs with a singular blend of regional accuracy and period steps and styling to thousands of people at literally hundreds of shows during these years. Throughout this time, Mark & Djana continued to teach and perform in their duo acts. Health factors caused them to dissolve die Alpentanzgruppe in 1997; in 2003 they retired from Italian dance, in 2005 they retired from Alpine dance as well. Mark and Djana are currently performing period Viennese ballroom dances as the Strauss Dancers.

The Siders determined from the beginning of their Germanic performance career that, while they would present some schuhplatter numbers, their emphasis would be on researching and showcasing a characteristic cross section of the many other numbers that exist in the village dance tradition and were largely unknown in America. These numbers included intricate courtship ländlers, graceful mazurkas, lively polkas and schottisches, and stately processionals. Mark & Djana are committed folkdance preservationists, and the resurrection of these neglected numbers has been the core of their interest and repertoire through the years, with as well, in the later years of the group and duo act, an increasing emphasis on forgotten dances from Germanic population ‘island’ settlements in lost territories of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. These dances from the borderlands add a unique spice to their programs, with musical arrangements, figures and steps revealing fascinating traces of Czech, Hungarian, North Italian, Polish, Rumanian, and Slovakian melodies and styling.