workshops
Instructor: Harry Koutroumanis
Haralambos (Harry) Koutroumanis was born and raised in Tampa, FL, and moved to Charlotte, NC, in 2023 after graduating from the University of Florida in Gainesville with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Finance. His folk dance research primarily focuses on the island of Crete.
Harry gained interest in Greek folk music and dance through the Cretan Sillogo of Clearwater in 2017, and also began dancing with the Hellas Dancers of Holy Trinity Clearwater. Despite having no Cretan origin, he fell in love with the sound and style of Crete. He attended his first HDF in 2018 with Hellas Dancers, and competed with them at FDF 2019. He later joined Afieroma in Gainesville and competed at HDF from 2022-2023. He is currently a co-instructor for Charlotte’s adult HDF team, Filodoxia.
Much of Harry’s initial knowledge of Crete consisted of the typical Pan-Cretan, modern style of dance, which has been widely adopted as “Cretan Dance”. After attending FDF, he began to realize that Cretan dance has deeper roots than the typical 5 or 6 “Dances of Crete”, which spurred him to begin questioning what he had learned of Greek Dance in general. Harry began collecting research on the customs and traditions of Crete, with a primary focus on the Noumo of Rethymno. He traveled to Crete in the summer of 2024 to conduct his own first-hand research on the area of Rethymno.
His goal as a researcher is to preserve village-specific idiosyncrasies in dance and music, and to study how the same dances from the same areas have evolved over time. Harry emphasizes the different styles of dance and music, primarily within Crete, throughout specific timeframes and how they’ve changed.
For the Mathisi workshop, Harry will present dances from Asterousia, in the Noumo of Heraklion.
WORKSHOP 1 - ASTEROUSIA
WORKSHOP 2 - evros
Instructor: Sarantos Kaperonis
Mr. Sarantos N. Kaperonis was born and raised in Charlotte, NC, and graduated pharmacy school at South Carolina’s College of Pharmacy. His parents are from Karyes (Arachova), Lakonia, a village in southern Greece.
He has been involved in Greek Folk dance from a very young age, where he started dancing for his home parish, Holy Trinity, under the direction of Stacie Peroulas and Marina Photopoulos. They were the first people to introduce him to many important characteristics of Greek folk dance. As a member of their dance group, Sarantos competed at the Metropolis of Atlanta’s Hellenic Dance Festival (HDF) for seven years and later. went on to dance with Charlotte’s Adult group, Stavraetoi, under the direction of Nick Metrakos. Through his experiences gained as a dancer, he began directing within his community in 2008.
In 2011, Sarantos began following his dream of doing first-hand research in Greece. With the help of Greek dance teacher Angelos Nikolaidis and musician Panagiotis Zikidis he has researched the music and dances of many villages in northern Greece, in addition to his village Karyes (Arachova). He has focused most of his time researching the region of Thrace, specifically Evros, since the music, dances, and paradosi of this region are what he has loved from a young age.
This inspired him to learn Thracian Gaida in the unique Evritiko style under the mentoring of Panagiotis Zikidis of Pentalofos, Evros. He also plays Thracian Lyra which currently only a few musicians play and is in a revival stage.
His goal as a researcher is to portray the different characteristics and style in folklore within villages of the same region, specifically Thrace, because individual villages’ paradosi has been generalized and ultimately lost over the years.
In addition to doing first-hand research, Sarantos has participated in many workshops across the United States, Canada, and Greece to further enhance his knowledge in Greek folklore. He has taught workshops for groups within the Carolinas, the Metropolis of Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, California, Washington, and Canada and as a musician, has played at numerous events in North America and Greece.