Dance teacher for more than 50 years to receive Lifetime Contribution Award Dec. 28 during 69th Christmas Country Dance School at Berea College

In the company of hundreds of friends and fellow country dance enthusiasts, Rev. Pat Napier of Bowling Green, a 1949 Berea College alumnus, will be presented the award by Brad Foster, Country Dance and Song Society Executive and Artistic Director.  The ceremony is expected to take place at approximately 8:30 p.m. in Old Seabury Gym.

Napier has been teaching dancing and stories since the 1930s.  A paper he wrote for a Berea College recreation class early in his career has been the gold standard for folk dance teachers and instructors and is still used today, published as “Kentucky Mountain Square Dance.”  For more than 50 years, Napier was a staff member at the Christmas Country Dance School at Berea as the teller of Jack Tales and teacher of the Big Set and Kentucky Running Set dances.

An eastern Kentucky native born in 1925, Napier began going to dances with his parents as a young boy and grew up learning to love square dancing.  After serving in the Merchant Marines, Napier enrolled at Berea, where he was a member of the Berea College Country Dancers.  He went on to earn a doctorate in educational administration and spent 32 years in school teaching and administration in Kentucky schools, serving as a classroom teacher, school principal and as superintendent in several districts.  In 1988, he started a second career, becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister.  Since then, has served as pastor and interim pastor in a number of rural Kentucky churches.

Now 82 years old and officially retired, Napier still preaches, substitute teaches and calls dancing wherever he is needed.  For the past two years he has let others do the teaching at the Christmas Country Dance School, enjoying it as a participant.  He plans never to give up dancing, having said in a recent interview  “When you stop dancing, you stop living.”

Since 1938, Berea College has hosted Christmas Country Dance School annually Dec. 26-Jan. 1.  The dance week includes classes during the day in many kinds of dance, music, storytelling, and crafts, and evenings filled with dancing and song.

The public is invited to the evening dance, singing and storytelling.  Dec. 26-30, the evening activities last from 7:30 to 11 p.m., with a charge of $20.  On New Year’s Eve, the evening events last from 8 p.m. to midnight, with a charge of $25.

Originated to train teachers at mountain schools to teach folk dance to their students, Christmas School now welcomes more than three hundred people each year. The staff are all internationally known musicians, dance leaders, craftspeople, and storytellers. Among them are Madison County residents and Kentucky Folk Heritage Award Winners Donna and Lewis Lamb, who will be playing for the Dec. 28 dance.  Participants range from complete beginners to leaders in their own communities who come to hone their skills.

More information and a complete schedule is available at Christmas country dance school.