Background
Karras was born in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Karras was born in Thessaloniki, Greece.
After serving in the Coast Guard, he studied theater and dance at New York University and eventually joined the Greek National Theater and the Parthenon Dancers, one of the premier Greek Folk Dance troops.
He came to the United States when he was about 12. In the early 1960s, he founded the Intersection Folk Dance Center in Los Los Angeles Foreign 25 years, Karras taught Greek culture and dance at Loyola Marymount University.
He was the United States. coordinator for Mazoxi, an annual Greek dance conference held on Crete.
He also appeared in about 20 films and television projects, staged a number of Greek-language plays in Los Angeles and produced folklore programs and events throughout North America. Karras died on February 12, 2010 at Providence Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California of complications from coronary artery bypass surgery.