Wild Steps

Wild Steps was founded by Kate Rose, PhD, in 2025, with friends from various musical backgrounds and traditions. Kate has a lifetime of rooted experience as an Irish fiddler and spent two years learning music and dance traditions in rural County Clare, Ireland from the old players and in the old way. She noticed a great interest at the heart of the tradition for other musical traditions and for innovation and personal expression, as well a way of playing and listening from the heart and joyfully serving the community. Since then, she has carried this into her interactive performances for several years in Arizona and beyond and is also an educator and nonprofit leader. She teaches Inclusively Wild Community Dance twice a month for the overall community and for developmentally disabled dancers at their day center, Quality Connections; she also leads wheelchair dances in facilities for the elderly and trains professionals in justice-informed trauma care, while playing to raise money for organizations serving vulnerable populations such as the homeless and undocumented people. Her weekly performances at Charly’s Pub bring people together from diverse walks of life and get them dancing. With guitarist and advisory board member Armand Ramirez, her duo Wild World Irish Fiddle combines Latin rhythms and Irish melodies, breaking new musical ground in a spirit of meeting at our deep roots.

Wild Steps engages in folk music and dance activities to connect cultures and build community, especially to serve and represent vulnerable populations. We offer interactive performances, inclusive dances, festivals, benefit concerts, educational initiatives, and partnerships. By fusing musical genres, we increase exchange and empathy based on our unique stories, while also leading creative and constructive social change initiatives. Recognizing a gap, we are pursuing research and recreation activities to bring Arizona folk music and dance traditions from various cultures to life and unite people in a spirit of joy and understanding (the Wild West Fiddle Project).

Regular, specific programs are for people with intellectual, physical, and hidden disabilities (including PTSD and neurodivergence), the elderly, high school students, and we are always expanding to include groups facing challenging and unjust life circumstances. Social justice and social change are at the heart of our festive, collaborative, and hands-on practices. We ask ourselves: What needs are there in our community? Who is already addressing these? How can we work with them to add our creative and visionary solutions to meet these? This usually involves the transformative power of music and dance, but not always. For example, we are piloting a carpooling project for school families in partnership with Flagstaff Unified School District because we believe in sustainability, paradigm-shifting, and helping struggling parents.