All our leaders and musicians donate their time, but there are expenses to producing dance events, and we share our income with the facilities where we dance. Please donate as you are able, but if you can’t afford it, please come anyway!
Dance Leading Team
Ted Matin Ryle
Ted Matin is a Certified Dance Leader, a Sufi cherag (minister), and Mentor-in Training. He has a background in musical theatre and has composed for plays at the Olympia Family Theatre. He has a special interest in bringing Sufi practices to more interested people, periodically conducting a Sufi Inquirers class, or Zikr and Q & A. Professionally he is a social worker administering rehabilitation services for the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families. Ted plays guitar and hand drum, particularly cajon. He has three adult children and lives in Olympia with his wife Jen.
Marti Munajat Dimock
Marti Munajat is a Certified Dance Leader and a Mentor-in-Training. She has a background in elementary education and arts administration. Her special interest is reaching out to a varied group of people with the Dances. Professionally she is a retired Waldorf teacher and Music and Movement teacher, and also teaches folkdancing and Nia, a fusion fitness practice, and sings with the Olympia Peace Choir. She plays guitar, hand drums, accordion and melodica. She has two adult children, five grandchildren and lives in Olympia with her husband Bruce.
Marie Khaliqa Sullivan
Marie Khaliqa is a Dance Leader in Training. She is a trained vocalist, and loves to share music with others. Professionally she works as a stylist, designing photo shoots for commercial advertising. She is an avid traveler and has been to Egypt, Turkey, & Thailand. She feels a special mission to interest more young people in the Dances. She lives in downtown Seattle with her husband Burton.
Musicians
Giles Arendt
Giles Arendt was raised in Pittsburgh, where he sang in the choir, played recorder, and lived in a house full of jazz and classical music. At age 14 he fell in love with the guitar, pulled his dad’s old guitar out of the closet, added new strings and took classical guitar lessons. He went to the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative & Performing arts, where “everybody from the principal to the janitor” played music. He came to Olympia to attend Evergreen State College, loved the community and settled here. He writes jazzy and folk instrumental music for acoustic guitar, and pursues diverse world music rhythms and modalities, while also performing lead on electric guitar in the local rock-n-roll band, Pumphouse. He has worked with kids most of his life, from providing services to street kids to driving a school bus. He has two teenage children.
Ian Hammond Stephen
Ian Hammond Stephen has been playing guitar for 35 years and the bass guitar and cajon for over a decade. He used to play with Europa, an Eastern-European folk music group, in Phoenix, AZ, and has played and sung at many weddings and memorial services over the years. He moved to Olympia in January of 2023 and is delighted to be playing with other local musicians to help people in our community to connect and feel renewed through music and dance.
Zarifah Spain
Zarifah came in singing and studied folk guitar and classical violin in her early years. A lifetime of choral singing shifted recently to a focus on serving as musician for the Dances of Universal Peace, which she also leads. Zarifah now travels extensively to play for Sufi and DUP gatherings and retreats in Hawai’i, Bali, and across the US, devoting her music to the cultivation of joy, inner peace, and compassion for all beings. She has two adult sons and makes her home at the Songaia Co-housing Community just north of Seattle.