SEQUIM — Two new dance classes are set to start Tuesday at the Sequim Prairie Grange Hall, 290 Macleay Road, as Pam and Derek Perkins teach their last sessions on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The couple, ballroom-dance champions and veteran instructors, are about to move to North Carolina, but not before Pam teaches a samba class and Derek does some quickstep.
“This is going to be really interesting for me; I’ve never taught a dance class on my own,” said Pam.
She’s been dancing, however, since she was 15. And she’s been married to her dance partner Derek for 58 years.
Everyone is welcome — singles, couples, groups of friends — at Pam’s samba class to start at 7 p.m. Tuesday. This class will give you another arrow for the quiver, as it were.
If you hear a piece of music that isn’t obviously a samba, but you feel like dancing the samba to it, well, get out there and move, Pam advises.
For this 77-years-young dancer, dancing is about music and freedom.
After Pam’s session, Derek will start quickstep classes at 8 p.m. This ballroom dance, done to up-tempo swing and jazz, looks like a fast foxtrot — with syncopated rhythm and elegant posture.
Participants pay $7 per class or $12 for both sessions on a given night. Pam’s samba and Derek’s quickstep classes will meet every Tuesday till May 27, except for May 13 when both have another commitment.
For more about the Sequim Prairie Grange Hall dance series, contact instructor Carol Hathaway — who’ll be assisting Pam in her samba classes — at Hathaway00@gmail.com or 360-460-3836.
