Kate Spanos Irish Dance performs at local Irish festivals

We’re continuing to build the Kate Spanos Irish Dance name (new website coming soon!) and this fall we were featured at two local Irish festivals. In September, we were invited to perform at the CCÉ Irish Folk Fest and last weekend we performed at the Maryland Irish Festival, celebrating its 50th year.

On September 28, we performed at the CCÉ Irish Folk Festival in Herndon, VA. We opened with a festival style slip jig, a piece that Amanda and I choreographed together. It’s a dance that really showcases the elegance and control that’s so characteristic of this style. We performed to the beautiful tunes of “Na Ceannabháin Bhána” and “Comb Your Hair and Curl It.” 

We also performed my festival style choreography of “The Blackbird,” a very slow version of this well-known traditional Irish set dance. And we closed our performance with a lively treble reel finale, as Irish dancers are wont to do! This piece was a collaborative effort and we danced our own solos along with ensemble steps by created by my teacher Lauren Smyth and my student Maggie Hensler-McGinnis. We danced to the energetic tunes of “Glass of Beer” and “The Silver Spear.”

Thanks Joe DeZarn on fiddle for accompanying us so beautifully. I also want to extend a special thanks to Nina Gibson inviting us to perform at this event.

Just a few weeks later, on November 10, we had the opportunity to perform at the Maryland Irish Festival at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, MD. After a quick rehearsal in some abandoned horse stables (!), we performed in the huge Cow Palace where there were tons of stages and vendors. 

For this performance, we expanded our repertoire and introduced some new collaborations. We worked with Abbie Palmer (harp, voice) and Kevin Elam (guitar, whistle). The addition of Abbie’s harp brought a whole new dimension to our festival style dancing, as it is so well matched with this elegant and ethereal style. One of the new additions to our program was a set of jigs, featuring a mix of sean nós and step dance styles. These were particularly exciting because they were improvised in dialogue with each other and the musicians and allowed us to show our ability to spontaneously interpret music.

We presented two different versions of “The Blackbird” at this festival. The first was the standard one that most step dancers learn early on in their dance career (or some version of it!) and the other was a historical piece created by Jeremiah Molyneaux, a 19th-century dancing master from North Kerry, which I learned from Jonathan Kelleher of Siamsa Tíre (the national folk theatre of Ireland in Tralee, Co. Kerry) during my time at the University of Limerick.

For me, the crown jewel of our performance was the festival style set dance, “Carrickfergus.” This is a popular air/song that I have loved since I was a child. I invited Abbie specifically to collaborate on this one because I thought it would sound gorgeous on the harp, and she also sang it as an added bonus! So we presented two interpretations of this hauntingly beautiful love ballad—one sung and one danced.

Thanks to Laura Cadden for inviting us to perform at this festival!

It’s always an honor to share the stage with so many talented Irish tradition bearers. I’m proud of how my dancers and I were able to blend traditional steps with innovative choreography, and I’m excited to continue bringing Irish dance to our local community.

Check out some highlights below!