Duke’s Blues 2026
Our dance teachers
Get ready to meet the international teachers Ioanna & Alex for couple blues dance and Lucía for wonderful solo blues topic classes as well as a solo performance class for our more advanced students.
On top of this, we have Modestine, for a special topic class on Friday as well as another surprise class on Sunday !
Teachers
Ioanna Panagopoulou & Alex Palamidis (GR)
Alex and Ioanna are an enthusiastic blues dance couple! They love to share their personal style of Blues dancing through teaching, adore choreographing captivating performances and cherish loooong nights of social dancing!
They are both highly trained dancers; Ioanna has been dancing since she was a child and Alex has been doing Swing dances since 2008!
Since 2017 they have been focusing on Blues, traveling around Europe deepening their understanding of the Blues dance, history and culture as well as continuously developing their dancing and teaching skills!
Thanks to their love & dedication and building on the excitement of the local dancers they have managed to build an explosive Blues dance community in Athens!
In just a few years (even through the covid years) it has steadily grown to become an energetic, loving and high leveled community – many members of which you’ll also find travelling around European festivals!
Ioanna Panagopoulou started dancing at the age of 4. She trained in ballet, modern jazz and hip-hop for more than 10 years and in 2011 she discovered Swing dancing.
She took a break for a couple of years to study jazz improvisation at a conservatoire.
When she came back to Swing dancing, she discovered Blues and completely fell in love with it! Since then she’s one of the most active members of the blues scene in Europe. She hasn’t stopped exploring the magic world of Blues through dancing, training and teaching in international festivals. Her goal is to always be inspired, passionate and creative!
Alex is passionate about sharing the cultural depth of African American dances and the emotions they evoke, a passion he’s been nurturing for over a decade and a half!
He started dancing back in 2008, exploring a variety of Swing styles (Lindy Hop, Balboa, Shag, Authentic Jazz), before falling in love with the Blues!
While he still enjoys all of these, Blues and Lindy Hop hold a special place in his heart.
Alex loves delving into the wide range of Blues dance idioms and music styles. His (current) favorite idioms: Struttin’ and Texas Shuffle!
After a decade of teaching at one of Greece’s first swing dance studios, he opened his own, the “Stomping Ground”, in 2021 where he inspires dancers to connect with the heart and soul of Blues and Swing.
Alex’s teaching philosophy is simple yet powerful: building strong technique, understanding the culture behind these dances, sparking inspiration and personal creative expression, and -most importantly- keeping the dances fun and enjoyable.
Together with Ioanna, they’ve built an explosive Blues dance community in Athens and organize the “Blues After Hours” festival, where great live music takes center stage!
Lucía Mendoza (E)
Lucía was born in Madrid in 1988. She felt attracted to the performing arts from an early age; in fact, she started studying theatre and ballet at the age of 6. At 17, she was admitted to the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático (RESAD) in Madrid, where she graduated in Performing Arts. During those years, in addition to her training as an actress, she studied various dance disciplines (classical, contemporary, modern jazz, Latin dances, historical dances, etc.) and different techniques of movement and bodily expression.
Since Lucía grew up listening to jazz, blues, soul, etc. at home, it is not surprising that she started going to vintage clubs to listen to music from the 30s to the 60s. It was in this way that, in 2013, she discovered that the music she loved could also be danced, which changed her life forever. Lindy Hop and Balboa were the first disciplines she came into contact with, but it was while dancing Blues that she definitely felt she had found her place. Since then, she has not stopped attending international workshops and festivals.
In 2017, she decided to pursue her career as a dancer and teacher, and shortly after she moved to Rome, where she became part of the Swinghaus school as a teacher of Blues, Lindy Hop, Solo Jazz, and Balboa, while especially dedicating herself to developing the local Blues scene both as a teacher and as an event organizer.
In Rome, she also took a professional DJ course, in order to contribute as a DJ to creating atmospheres on the dance floors.
In Italy, she participated in a television broadcast dancing Blues, took part as a teacher at festivals, and began collaborating in the organization of the first international Blues festival in Rome, which was suspended due to the pandemic.
In 2018, she participated in the Bluesology teachers training in Valencia to strengthen her teaching techniques and learn how to correctly transmit the principles and values of Blues culture, which she considers very important.
In August 2020, she moved permanently to Valencia, where she currently teaches Blues and Solo Blues both internationally and locally in various schools in the city. She actively participates in the local scene and collaborates in organizing parties. She also teaches Lindy Hop and Boogie Woogie as a member of the Black Bottom School team.
Lucía, apart from dancing, loves teaching and organizing events because she enjoys conveying the passion she feels for dance and music and creating communities.
Outside the dancing world, Lucía is a designer and a professional actress, which is why she also enjoys being an MC at festivals.
In her classes, she tries to use the tools and experience she has from theatre and bodily expression to ensure that, through movement and music, people find their voice and can connect with their emotions and with others.
Nothing makes her happier than seeing a class or a dance floor full of people enjoying the moment.
Modestine Ekete (CM)
Originally from Cameroon, Modestine Ekété is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans music, dance, and theatre. Trained in the Bamiléké traditions and shaped by the artistic company Le Baobab in Yaoundé, she quickly became a leading dancer, singer, and percussionist, winning the National Prize for Contemporary African Dance and representing Cameroon internationally.
After working with renowned directors and performing in major cultural festivals in France, she settled in Luxembourg, where she co-founded AlterCadance and became a key figure in the development of African and Afro-contemporary dance in the country. Her choreographic work Pont invisible was selected for Esch 2022 – European Capital of Culture, and she continues to create across disciplines, from storytelling festivals to musical projects and pedagogical programs like ACDAMAF.
Modestine’s artistic journey is driven by a deep connection to African traditions and a commitment to expanding their place in the European cultural landscape.
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