PATRIOT BREMERTON
KITSAP WEEK: Hydroplane racing great Chip Hanauer and his Winter Rendezvous return to Kitsap
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2016 | Vol. 18, No. 47 | WWW.BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM | 50¢
IN THIS EDITION
Dance is 17-year-old choreographer’s life
NEWS Pedestrian killed in crash
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NEWS $100,000 for OC nursing scholarships
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Michelle Beahm / staff photo
Top: From left, Elise Shroeder, Nicole Malloy, Reyan Pritchard and Madeline Mills rehearse for the choreography showcase. Right: Madeline Mills, the lead dancer in Michelle Asencio’s choreographed piece, soars above her fellow dancers Delanie Jones, left, Nicole Malloy, middle, and Reyan Pritchard, right, in rehearsal. BY MICHELLE BEAHM MBEAHM@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
OPINION Mixed feelings about online shopping
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NEWS New science standards
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BREMERTON — As a 17-year-old high school senior, Michelle Asencio works hard to maintain straight A’s, is in four advanced placement classes, plays music in the high school marching band, takes pilates classes every Friday and participates in hours of dance class five days a week. Asencio has been dancing for about 13 years, and on Feb. 20 and 21, the public will have their first opportunity to see a piece Asencio choreographed
in the Peninsula Dance Theatre’s Choreography Showcase. “I got my inspiration when I got a bad grade,” Asencio said. She said she tries to maintain a 4.0 grade point average, but after earning a B+ last year, she turned the experience into inspiration for her emerging choreographer piece in the 2016 showcase. “I morphed that idea into the idea of a leader who falls,” she said. “They’re always in the front, the group’s following, they start to fall and then they end up in the back.” While her “bad grade” wasn’t that
bad, by Asencio’s admission, it was enough for her to turn the idea into a choreographed, contemporary modern dance with ballet elements, featuring six of her fellow dancers.
“There’s one person who’s the leader,” she said. “They go out first, and then they start to go slower than the SEE SHOWCASE, A6
Economic growth likely to last years, economist says BY CHRIS TUCKER CTUCKER@CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.COM
BREMERTON — Economist John Mitchell is bullish on the local, state and national economy. Mitchell said that the economy as of January 2016, was
extraordinary and exciting, with unemployment at 5 percent and the inflation rate less than 1 percent. “Not bad at all,” he said. Mitchell spoke at the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance’s annual economic forecast meeting at the Kitsap
Conference Center in Bremerton Jan. 28. Mitchell said a crude way to estimate how long an expansion might last was based on the lag between the end of a recession (June 2009) and the first increase in prime interest rate (December 2015). By that
measure, he said, the current economic expansion could last until 2021. Mitchell said a tighter labor market would put “more upward pressure on wages. Availability of skilled labor is going to be a big deal … Wage pressure for low skilled were
almost as pervasive because of minimum wage increases and labor shortages at entry level positions.” Mitchell said the Federal Reserve’s “Beige book” had a fairly cheery message. SEE ECONOMY, A5
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