Kate Spanos, Ph.D., is a dancer and dance scholar with a passion for studying dance and music styles from around the world. She performs and teaches workshops and lectures in Irish dance and Brazilian frevo dance. She earned her doctorate from the University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies in 2016, with a focus on dance ethnography and performance studies. She received a postdoctoral Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to study frevo and popular dance in Recife and Olinda in Pernambuco, Brazil in 2018. Her doctoral work was about carnival and the masquerade tradition of the Caribbean island of Montserrat. She earned her Master’s degree in Traditional Irish Dance Performance from the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music & Dance in 2008. Her dance training is based in Irish dance, but she continues to explore other dance genres through a combination of practice and research, especially Brazilian and Caribbean styles. She aims to make traditional performing arts accessible to the DC metro community through teaching and promotion of cultural events. For more information, visit www.thekatespanos.com.
