Desmond the Day Dragon was born, one spring morning, many decades ago. Once sporting four segments and a tail, he is now a scarred but undefeated unidragon. Missing a few of his ferocious teeth he can still flash that winning smile that has carried him through a thousand battles.

Nigel the Night Dragon is long, red and a slippery character. Born at midnight in a Welsh castle he swam across the Atlantic Ocean (he hates flying) and has been prowling the shadows of Cambridge for many years. His eyes are sensitive to the slightest movement.
He is a hip reptile.

Normally these two dragons are natural enemies but at the equinox, when the day and the night are of equal length, Oshun the river spirit summons them to a bridge over the River Charles where, intoxicated by the sound of people singing, they meet and dance the Equinox Waltz.

David Coffin has performed throughout New England since 1980. He is widely known for his rich baritone voice and his impressive collection of musical instruments, which includes concertinas, recorders, penny-whistles, bombards, gemshorns, cornamuse, shawm, rauschphieffe – or, as he explains, “generally anything that requires a lot of hot air”. At the heart of David’s work is his extensive collection of songs from the Maritime tradition. To date, David has recorded four solo CDs; his latest, Last Trip Home, was released in the Fall of 2009 and features his daughter, Linnea, who is also a Revels performer.

David has performed with Revels since 1980 as a singer, instrumentalist and, since 1991, as Master of Ceremonies. Since 2014, David has served as Artist in Residence at Revels and has presented his acclaimed School Enrichment Programs to schools across the region as an extension of Revels Education. He runs tours of Boston Harbor during the summer months, leading over 5,000 inner-city children on boat trips to George’s and Spectacle Islands. He also directs the narration program for Boston Harbor Cruises and hosts the Brunch Cruises every weekend from May to October.

Singer, saxophonist, flutist, actor, Stan Strickland has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand and the former Soviet Union. . He has performed with the Boston Pops, the Village People, Aretha Franklin, and jazz greats Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Shirley Scott and Marlena Shaw, and opened for Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Natalie Cole and The Bare Naked Ladies.

Stan is an associate professor of voice at Berklee College of Music and executive co-director of Express Yourself, a multi-cultural arts organization that serves mentally ill youth through the Department of Mental Health. He received a MA degree from Lesley University in Expressive Arts Therapy with a major in dance therapy.

He has performed and worked with many modern dance companies including members of the Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, and Bill T Jones companies and Dance Collective of Boston.

His one-man show “Coming Up For Air, An Auto-Jazzography”, tells the story os his near-death experience swimming in Hawaii and received the prestigious Eliot Norton Award in theatre for best solo performance.

Isaura Oliveira was born in Salvador-Bahia, the cradle of African Brazilian culture, where African traditions and the arts are constantly maintained and nourished. This is exactly from where and how Isaura built her cultural-artistic experience. She has devoted her extraordinary talents to work in academic, artistic, community, educational and health venues.

Isaura appeared in a PBS and BBC-TVs documentary “Dancing #5: New Worlds, New Forms” in 1993, as the representative for Brazilian dance. Her classes, lecturers, and performances left a lasting impression at Smith, Radcliffe, Wellesley Colleges; Brown, Wesleyan University, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Stanford, UC Riverside University; as well, at Motion Pacific in Santa Cruz-CA, Spontaneous Celebrations and The Dance Complex in MA.

Isaura performed ANCESTRAIS – her acclaimed solo performance of dance, theater and multi-media, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kresgie Auditorium in 2001. This program is available for performing arts theaters and festivals. ANCESTRAIS investigates the African Divinities of the Condomblé – the Orixas. Condomblé is the religious system transported by African slaves to Brazil through the state of Bahia. ANCESTRAIS affirms the right of people of the African Diaspora to celebrate, teach and learn their own culture, technique and philosophy as a part of the larger multicultural context of contemporary art. Directed by Isaura Oliveira and Professor Thomas DeFrantz.

Jireh Calo is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in the islands of the Philippines, currently based in Boston, MA. For her, creative expression is a means for connecting to spirit and exploring the intricate layers of being and reality. A multi-awarded performing and recording artist with a long-standing international career as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer, Jireh continues to deepen her music practice while integrating it with explorations in dance, visual art, crafts, theatre and writing. A summa cum laude graduate of the Berklee College of Music, Jireh holds a bachelors in Contemporary Writing & Production and master’s in Global Jazz Performance from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. Deeply involved with both her local and global community, she performs and collaborates with an eclectic array of artists while also mentoring young artists, teaching music and facilitating creative workshops.

Muddy River Morris held its first practice at Wheelock College in Boston in 1975 during a time of resurgent enthusiasm for folk dancing. Muddy River dancers were among the first to challenge the notion that only men should dance morris. They joined a burgeoning movement of all-female morris groups in England and the U.S. founded by women who were barred from dancing with existing local teams. Today, Muddy River considers itself a “historically women’s morris team” that welcomes individuals of all marginalized genders, including trans and non-binary dancers.

The Puppeteers’ Cooperative is a group of artists and puppeteers working in cities around the nation to create giant puppet parades, pageants, and ceremonies of celebration and complaint, using simple materials and movements to build community cardboard extravaganzas. They have worked with groups around the US and Canada, from Nova Scotia in the North to Florida in the South, and with festivals including the Atlanta Arts Festival and the Bumbershoot Festival of Seattle, creating semi-instantaneous pageants, art installations, and parades. Their massive pageants at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival in New York have explored neurosis and traffic jams in “Romeo and Juliet in New York City”, space and parrots in “The Tempest on Mars”, the highway system from Troy to Ithaca in “The Odyssey” fear of Da Mayor in “Metropopolis”, and city as circus in “Grand Meg-o-lopolis Circus”. Our ‘Triumph of the Arts” parades with the Governor’s Institute on the Arts of Vermont have become a beloved tradition. Puppeteers from the Puppeteers’ Cooperative have worked with First Night of Boston and First Night International and with First Night celebrations around the country since their inception, creating both experimental commissioned parade works and sections, and sprited and colorful community group parade pieces.

The Puppeteers’ Cooperative is also involved with a number of interrelated groups: Hi-Art videos, which makes videos of giant puppet pageants and miniature tabletop productions; News of the Week, for mini street shows; the Back Alley Puppet Theater, which creates parades and parade puppets in the Boston area; the Puppet Free Library, which lends puppets, banners, and masks to people and institutions in the Boston area; and the Construction Section, puppet makers.

The Puppeteers Cooperative was formed in San Francisco in 1976 by George Konnoff and Sara Peattie, two puppeteers formerly with the Bread and Puppet Theater. It was incorporated as a non-profit in Massachusetts in 1994. In 1993, Theresa Linnihan, then the director of the Newburyport Children’s Theater at Maudslay State Park, met Konnoff, and joined in 1997. George Konnoff died in 2001.

The Good Trouble Brass Band is a large, not-for-profit, “raucous, stomp-your-foot-and-belt-out-the-choruses” activist New Orleans-style street band based in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their mission is to fight for social justice causes and support community events while having fun and spreading joy through our music. We are also a part of the organizing force behind the HONK! Festival of activist street bands that takes place every October in Somerville’s Davis Square.

Aaron Flanders is one of the world’s premier balloon
sculptors. He is the best-selling author of: Balloon Animals; Balloon Hats and Accessories; More Balloon Animals; Balloon Cartoons and Other Favorites; and The Great Balloon Party Pack (McGraw Hill/Contemporary Books). All five of his books together have sold over 1,500,000 copies, and he is responsible, through his books and workshops, for having taught a whole generation of clowns, mimes, magicians and
other children’s performers how to sculpt balloons. He has also taught Ringling Bros./ Barnum & Bailey Circus clowns how to
sculpt balloons.

Aaron is also the founder of Aaron’s Balloon Animals,
Inc., a specialty-toy company he founded to market his balloon sculpture kits to the toy and gift market. His books and kits have been available in major retail stores, including: Toys R Us;
Michael’s Arts & Crafts Stores; Learning Express; Imaginarium; Discovery Channel Stores; Rand McNally Stores; Hobby Lobby; Zany Brainy; Noodle Kidoodle; World of Science and countless
specialty toy shops. They have also been available in the gift shops of The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, The
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Aaron’s balloon skills and prowess have been featured in: Harper’s Magazine; on the National Public Radio show “This American Life”; on a radio ad for Cellular One; and on the QVC Home Shopping Network.
Aaron has literally taught the country to “twist”. He has performed in virtually every situation in which one could imagine children and families. He is one of the quickest balloon sculptors in the world, and has a “menagerie” of over 100 animals that he has created out of balloons. For the past fifteen years, he has also been the much-beloved Sunday-evening entertainment at Jasper White’s Summer Shack restaurant, in Cambridge, MA.

Barbara Arpante has worked as a makeup artist for film, fashion, weddings, and events at Tanglewood, the Newburyport Spring & Autumn Fests, agricultural fairs, and various film and fashion shoots. She is excited to bring color to RiverSing!

Debra Wise (Revels Interim Artistic Director) co-founded Underground Railway Theater in Oberlin, Ohio; from 1978-2008, URT toured original works in the collaborative spirit of the Underground Railroad to venues ranging from Lincoln Center. to schools, to Symphony Hall, including Sanctuary-The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Home is Where, InTOXICating, and Christopher Columbus Follies; with the Boston Symphony, Firebird, Creation of the World, and Tempest. As URT’s Artistic Director, she created performances for non-traditional venues in the area, including Museum of Science, MIT Museum, Mary Baker Eddy Library, the MFA, and on the streets of Cambridge. After founding Central Square Theater with Nora Theatre Company in 2008, Wise co-founded Catalyst Collaborative@MIT, CST’s science theater partnership. She led partnerships with Mount Auburn Cemetery and the National Park Service (Roots of Liberty–The Haitian Revolution and the American Civil War). Productions Wise helmed have won Elliot Norton awards, including Vanity Fair; black odyssey boston; The Convert, and Constellations. Acting appearances at CST have included Angels in America, Half-Life of Marie Curie, Homebody, Copenhagen, Einstein’s Dreams, Arabian Nights; other stages include Commonwealth Shakespeare, New Rep, Speakeasy, Boston Playwrights, and the Public in NYC (The Haggadah, designed by Julie Taymor). She has adapted for the stage works by Dickens, Grace Paley, Lewis Carroll, and Gregory Maguire. She developed the Art Works for Schools curriculum with Harvard’s Project Zero, the DeCordova Museum, and area schools. Wise left her CST Artistic Director position in 2022 to invite diverse leadership; she continues as CoChair of the CC@MIT Advisory Committee. She consults with the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Theater Project (www.owrproject.org); co-authored a digital book on URT’s history (www.URTheaterEbook.com); and her third audiobook, The Witch of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire, was released this fall.

Elijah Botkin (Revels Music Director) graduated from Northeastern University in 2015 with bachelor’s degrees in Music History & Analysis and Mathematics. During his time at Northeastern, Elijah founded and directed the Northeastern Madrigal Singers; was President, Bass Section Leader, and Assistant Director for the NU Choral Society; and sang with and arranged for the award-winning a cappella group Distilled Harmony. In 2015, Elijah won the award for Outstanding Arrangement for his arrangement of Distilled Harmony’s quarterfinal-winning set in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. In the same year, his arrangement of “Nothing Feels Like You” by Little Mix also won a CARA (Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award) for Best Mixed Collegiate Song. In 2014, Elijah was granted the Gideon Klein Award in order to write his composition The Closed Town, which was premiered by the Northeastern University Chamber Choir in April 2015. Currently, Elijah continues to direct the NU Madrigals and serves on the Board of Trustees for Chorus pro Musica. He also sings with the Boston-based chamber choir Carduus and serves as their Treasurer and Business Manager.