Week 5
Dance Week
Open Mind, Insert Foot
Matthew Olwell

Matthew Olwell has been dancing and playing music for nearly 20 years. He has studied with some of the finest teachers in traditional dance, including Donny Golden, Eileen Carson, Benoit Bourque, The Fiddle Puppets Dancers, and Liam Harney. He danced for nine years with the Maryland-based Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, with whom he taught and performed nationally and internationally. (Matthew met Eileen Carson and other Members of Footworks, then The Fiddle Puppet Dancers, at Augusta Dance Week as a youth.)  Matthew now lives in Virginia, and is continuing life as a freelance dancer and percussionist. He performs with James Leva, John Skelton, Danny Knicely and many others. In 2006 Matthew and partner Emily Oleson founded Smiling Mountain Dance Intensive, a youth summer program near Charlottesville Virginia.