Putting the moves on Fayette County

When she was ten Pasty Alewine contracted rheumatic fever, and a heart murmur resulted. The doctor ordered bedrest and was startled when he discovered his precocious patient had been practicing dance several times a day at her bedside. When she lacked the energy to do this, she arrayed her dolls and taught them how to dance. Her condition improved, perhaps due to the mysterious therapeutic powers of dance, and she returned to the craft a year later. Alewine began to feel indebted to dance and has for the last 50 years dedicated herself to sharing it with others.

Alewine was born in Greenville, S.C. on May 14, 1941 to W.D. and Sarah Reynolds, their first child. As war stalked much of the old world and would soon come to the United States, she recalls the Upstate as scarcely having recovered from the Great Depression. "Back then it was hard times," she said. Alewine traces her roots in performance to her parents’ musical careers. W.D. played the fiddle with Bill Monroe, the eminent bluegrass musician, and on the Grand Ole Opry radio show and his own television program every Saturday night on WFBC in Greenville. Sarah was a blues singer with the Johnny Long Orchestra.

W.D. enrolled his daughter in dance lessons when she was two-and-a-half. He paid for them by painting the house of the teacher, Marjorie Palmer, each spring. "Daddy put me in dance because I was really shy, and I've never shut up since," Alewine said amusedly. Traveling with her parents exposed her firsthand to life on the road. She was known among friends and her parents' fellow performers as "the little traveling baby," for curling up for naps in guitar cases backstage, and for telling those who may have been in doubt that she had "lots of talent."

As Alewine cultivated her own skills in dance, singing, and with the bass fiddle, which she learned while recovering from rheumatic fever, she began to join her father in performances and even star in her own. She sang, danced, and played alongside W.D. on his television program and, as early as age six, tap danced and sang on WESC radio and television. When Alewine was around 13, having just completed a television performance, she found herself in the studio with Strom Thurmond, who as the then-governor of South Carolina was preparing to deliver a televised speech. She proceeded accidentally to strike him in the head by flinging one of the taps from her shoe. Thurmond, annoyed but not to be distracted from his task, said something to the effect of, “Don't worry about it honey. I'm fine.” A crisis was narrowly avoided.

The next several years Alewine won awards, trained with the masters of dance, and discovered her love of teaching. She did the shag on the Carolina coast with her younger brother Billy, whom she had coaxed into learning dance when they were young. She modeled for the Barden Company, did commercials for Buick, and traveled to New York with her dance instructor. She worked for Fred Astaire Dance Studio and was trained by the Russian danseur Alexis Dolinoff, worked in productions at the Little Theater, where Joanne Woodward performed, and operated a dance school in Greenville.

It was a period of expanding horizons, which culminated in her marriage to Walt Alewine and a move to Hawaii for three years where he worked for the Air Force. There she studied Hawaiian and Tahitian dance. After a year in New Jersey the Alewines moved, with two sons (and a third one to come soon), to Jonesboro, where Patsy conducted classes at the recreation center, and Walt worked as a pilot for Eastern. Next month it will have been 40 years since Miss Patsy's School of Dance first offered lessons, and the anniversary is a chance to muse over everything that has happened since that autumn in 1967.

In June of this year at Creekside High School a recital was held to commemorate this milestone. In the bulletin for the evening Alewine wrote, “During the past 40 years, I have taught and been involved with many wonderful students and parents. It is a thrill to have previous students bring their children to me,” and signed off, “Dancingly Yours.” The event was executed in large part by Polly Rogers, who met Alewine in September of 1968 when her daughter Tami, now a dance teacher, began lessons. Polly Rogers has helped operate the dance school for many years as secretary and office manager and said the yearly recitals and the former students they attract create an atmosphere that is “like one big family.” As Alewine mulled over her career, she remarked, “I found out that she remembers more about me than I do about myself.”

Alewine does indeed enjoy the lasting relationships she has had with her former students and their families. On a recent Thursday Christie Workman, a student of Alewine’s from 1978 to 1982 whose favorite dance was clogging, signed up her daughter Caroline, who is four, for dance instruction. “I brought her here because I just have found memories of this place and thought it would be the best place to bring her,” she said, helping Caroline with her leotard. Two of Alewine’s former students, Candy Preston and Susan Singleton, dedicated their recent dance production at Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation to their former teacher, writing, “Thank you for instilling the love of dance in our hearts.” Cindy Cox Ott, who after learning dance with Alewine went on to accolades including Miss Atlanta and Miss Georgia, modeled in New York and Paris, where she met her husband. In a letter her aunt wrote to Alewine, she thanked her for instilling ambition and self-respect in her niece.

To have built these lasting rapports and to have been so successful has obliged Alewine to put in a lot of work. She attends conventions and workshops several times a year to keep up with the latest trends in dance and is a member of the National Association of Dance and Affiliated Artists and the Professional Dance Teachers Association. Miss Patsy’s School of Dance operates a variety curriculum, which means tap, ballet, jazz, hip-hop, clogging, gymnastics, Hawaiian, and Tahitian are taught. Alewine’s preferred style remains tap, and she does not care for the vulgarities of hip-hop, but she insists on staying up to date to keep her students happy. The approach that includes a variety of styles also helps students who want to compete in dance because they could be asked to perform anything from ballet to the hula by the judges.

As Alewine and I sat and talked in her office the students began streaming in for their Thursday afternoon lessons. “I enjoyed your little girl. She was mighty precious. Did she have fun?” Alewine beamed as the child and her mother sat down. “Yes, she danced all day,” the mother said. This has been the consummate joy for Alewine over the years: sharing the pleasure of dance with her students and seeing it enrich their lives. Having turned 65 in May, Alewine is planning her retirement in the not-too-distant future, when she will hand over the reins to her granddaughter Ashley, who at 16 is an instructor at the school. “I’ve been real hard on her,” Alewine said. “Some day she’s gonna be a real fantastic teacher.” Alewine takes pride in passing the business on to her granddaughter, and she can be proud too of how she has affected those around her. Glenda Lohmann, whose daughter Lauren attended Miss Patsy’s School of Dance, encapsulated the predominant sentiment of Alewine’s students in a letter to the beloved dance teacher some years ago: “You’ve touched many, many lives with your gift, and your loving way of sharing it with young people.”