Kate Spanos

As coordinator of marketing and communications, Kate develops online and print marketing strategies for theatre and dance productions, lectures, master classes, workshops, and community outreach events. She also researches, creates, and organizes content for the School website, recruitment, alumni relations, and marketing materials by conducting interviews, and attending and documenting School events and productions.

Kate is also a dancer and dance scholar, having completed her Ph.D. in Dance and Performance Studies from the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies in 2015. As marketing communications coordinator for TDPS, she combines her expertise in marketing, web technology, and social media with her passion for the performing arts and dance scholarship.

Kate is co-founder and president of EducArte, a Maryland-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2019 with a mission to bring cultural arts education programming to Maryland and the Washington, DC region.

Education/Training:

• Postdoctoral Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, Universidade Federal de Recife, Brazil
• Ph.D. Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• M.A. Traditional Irish Dance Performance, University of Limerick, Ireland
• B.A. Cognitive Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Publications:

• “Dances of Cultural Resistance and Social Inclusion in Brazil: Frevo and Popular Dances of Pernambuco,” Handbook of Social Inclusion, Research and Practices in Health and Social Care. Springer, New York. July 2020. (forthcoming)
• “Frevo: A Reflection on Dances of Resistance during Times of Protest,” Smithsonian Folklife Festival Blog. Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, Washington, DC. September 2020. https://festival.si.edu/blog/frevo-dances-of-resistance-protest 
• “Dancing Between Pedagogy and Performance: Guerreiros do Passo and the Case of Brazilian Frevo,” Dance Chronicle, 43, no. 1 (2020): 3-31.
• “A Dance of Resistance from Recife, Brazil: Carnivalesque Improvisation in Frevo,” Dance Research Journal, 51, no. 3 (2019): 28-46.
• “Locating Montserrat between the Black and Green,” Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, 9, no. 2 (2019): 1-14.
• “Dancing the Archive: Rhythms of Change in Montserrat’s Masquerades,” Yearbook for Traditional Music, 49 (2017): 67-91.
• “Weaving Music and Braiding Tradition: Irish Step Dance in Ireland and the North American Diaspora,” Proceedings of the 27th Symposium of the International Council for Traditional Music Study Group on Ethnochoreology, University of Limerick, Ireland (July 2012).
• Book review: Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, edited by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, Theatre Survey, 55, no. 2 (2014): 264-266.
• Book review: Planes of Composition: Dance, Theory, and the Global, edited by André Lepecki and Jenn Joy, Theatre Journal, 63, no. 3 (2011): 482-483.
• Martin van den Berg, Kathleen A. Spanos, Michael Kubovy, “The Effect of Synaesthetically Induced Colors on Perceptual Organization,” Journal of Vision, 5, no. 8 (2005).

Feature stories:

• Creating Alternate Worlds Through Digital Performance (December 2020)

• Theatre Alumni Win Five 2020 Helen Hayes Awards (September 2020)

• Theater Community Pivots to Another Kind of Mask (April 2020)

• Theater Students Open New Doors to Ibsen’s ‘Doll House’ (February 2020)

• Making All the Right ‘Noises’ (February 2020)

• Untold Stories of the Western Frontier (November 2019)

• Syntax and Dance (November 2019)

• Professor Daniel Conway travels to the ‘Olympics’ of theatrical design (September 2019)

• Theatre Professor Scot Reese Inducted to College of Fellows (May 2019)

• Theatre Professor Jennifer Barclay Wins IRNE Award (May 2019)

• Theatre Alumni Win Big at The 2019 Helen Hayes Awards (May 2019)

• Reimagining Dance for All Bodies (May 2019)

• Inspiration in Everyday Objects (May 2019)

• True to Life (April 2019)

• Dancing about Architecture: Tzveta Kassabova ‘09 Opens New Arts Space in Detroit (December 2018)

• Citizen: A Portrait of Race in America (November 2018)

• TDPS Dance Artist-in-Residence Christopher K. Morgan Presents “Pohaku” (March 2016)

Website: