VIENNA — Sunlight fades from Earth as the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, approaches. This is the time of year that the Vienna Union Hall prepares to celebrate the return of light, community, friendship and family by offering the seventh annual Winter Revels at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21.

The Vienna Union Hall Association will offer a variety of performers for this Revels. This year, Stan Keach, Julie Davenport and homey Dan Simons of Kahtadin Valley Boys will perform bluegrass music. Keach is a great musician, singer, accomplished songwriter, artist and longtime bandleader of the Sandy River Ramblers, which includes Keach, guitar; Davenport, upright bass; and Simons, mandolin.

Keach received honors at the seventh annual Songwriting Contest of the Maine Songwriters Association, chosen from among 33 entries for the 2017 honors, and after all the singing and the judging, Keach took first prize for his song, “On Boot Hill,” written with Rick Lang. He was also inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame in 2019.

The headliner performing at this year’s Revels is storyteller and mime, Antonio Rocha. Rocha, a native of Brazil, began his career in the performing arts in 1985. In 1988 he received a Partners of the Americas grant to come to the USA to perform and deepen his mime skills with Mime Master Tony Montanaro. Since then he has earned a Summa Cum Laude Theater BA from the University of Southern Maine and studied with Master Marcel Marceau.

Rocha’s unique fusion of mime and spoken word has been performed from Singapore to South Africa and many places in between, including 16 countries on six continents. Some of the venues include the Singapore Festival of the Arts, Wolf Trap, the National Storytelling Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic, the Tales of Graz in Austria and Dunya Festival in Holland, as well as many other storytelling festivals and educational institutions around the USA.

Also featured this year will be a couple of surprises, and St. Nick will make a brief visit to the hall. Be sure to get you tickets early since this show always sells out. The annual Winter Revels at the Union Hall offers the community a time to get together with friends and family for a warm and entertaining show and good food in a festive atmosphere. Tickets on sale now — a limited number remain — for $10/adult and $5/children 12 and under.

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