Samba Jig Productions combines music, dance, and technology to create exciting cultural interactions. We believe in creating unity and cultural understanding through sharing of music and dance traditions.
We are performers and cultural curators, and our work includes marketing, promotion, and event planning. We present and promote artists from a variety of cultures through event planning and production.
Samba Jig is a collaborative adventure founded by Brazilian musician Pablo Regis and Irish dancer Kate Spanos. Samba Jig is the presenting arm of EducArte, a non-profit arts education organization based in Maryland, which Pablo and Kate founded in 2019 in an effort to provide more community-centered and educational programming.
Pablo Regis de Oliveira is an arts administrator and musician. After getting his dual BA in political science and Latin American studies from UCLA, he worked in communications conducting public service advertising campaigns for government and non-profit clients, and worked in government, including serving in the District of Columbia Mayor’s Office of Community Relations. He is an accomplished community-based arts administrator, having served as program manager for Strathmore Community and Education Department and the Prince George’s Arts and Humanities Council. Pablo supported and coordinated the Brazilian segment of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s annual Folklife Festival. Pablo is a cavaco (string instrument) player, singer, and percussionist performing Brazilian music in the DC metro area. He grew up in Los Angeles and Brasília, surrounded by Brazilian music and culture. He is a recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council 2018 Individual Artist Award. He has also trained in a variety of Brazilian movement styles, including the martial art of capoeira, and frevo and cavalo marinho from the state of Pernambuco. For more information, visit www.pabloregis.com.
Kate Spanos is a dancer and dance scholar with a passion for studying dance and music styles from around the world. 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.