White Swan are former students of the Royal School of Ballet, who studied under the inspirational dance teacher Seymour Cox. Winners of the Dame Ninette de Valois and Daily Mail awards for best new coreography in 2010 and 2011, White Swan have been performing their show Golden Showers which blends tradional dance forms –  tap, clog, morris and rapper – with the non-narrative explorations of human movement of Merce Cunningham, to critical acclaim across Europe and the far east. This is their first DERT.

Chris was a founder member of the (insert adjective of choice here) Seven Champion Molly Dancers.  In his role as Molly he combines both the Tommy and Betsy characters and has been announcing, fooling and dancing for far too long.  This year will see him MC the John Gasson Memorial jig competitions at Sidmouth for the 25th time.  He has been a regular display dance MC at Sidmouth and Toweresey Festivals for 20 plus years.  An experienced caller, Chris's latest aberration is stand-up comedy.  His wikapaedic knowledge of the intr

Tom caught the Rapper bug at Pinewoods Camp, USA, and has been dancing, performing, and teaching rapper since 1966.  From 1996 he has run a teenage rapper group which started as Velocirapper and eventually became Great Meadows Morris and Sword. These teams have attended two Sword Spectaculars and four DERTS as Velocirapper, Candyrapper, Slightly Green, Beside the Point, Scrambled Six, and Pocketflyers. More recently Tom organized DART (Dancing America Rapper Tournament) which had its second successful meet in 2011.  

Ricky was born and bred in the mining village of High Spen in Co. Durham, where his father and grandfather were rapper dancers with High Spen Blue Diamonds. He was taught to step at the age of six by his grandfather, and was dancing in the junior team (High Spen Excelsiors) at the age of seven. Ricky and his three brothers continued dancing the High Spen Blue Diamonds tradition with their father Freddy in charge. In 1982 they were asked to perform at the Dancing England festival in Derby. The team under Ricky's leadership went on to win competitions in Whitby, Darlington and DERT.

Alan joined the Rapper clan in the early nineties whilst dancing other folk traditions (Border Morris and Appalachian). First taught by High Spen Blue Diamonds, he was a founder member of Purple Heather Rapper, dancing with Ryknild in the nineties and Thrales in the naughties. He has danced in front of The Prince of Wales and The Duke of Edinburgh but the name of the other pub eludes him. 

Alistair is a master of the English concertina and the Northumbrian pipes, teacher and composer. In 1986 he set up Folkworks to promote folk music, and launched the folk music degree at Newcastle university in 2001.