PHOTOS BY CANDY PADILLA/ 209 Magazine
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THE BEST THINGS HAPPEN WHILE YOU’RE DANCING By KRISTINA HACKER
209MAGAZINE.COM
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reg and Priscilla McCrea met while dancing salsa. The couple, now married, decided to start out 2023 by getting back on the dance floor together, this time learning how to swing dance. “We’re trying to reconnect with something new,” said Priscilla during a recent swing dance lesson at Alegria Performing Arts Academy in downtown Turlock. At the same swing dance lesson were Chris and Morgan Thomas. They’ve been country swing dancing at Alegria since 2020. Chris and Morgan were just friends when they started dance lessons at the same time, and now they’re happily married; something they both attribute to their connection on the dance floor. “It’s the best place to come and learn. It’s not a bar setting. You can really get down and lose your pride,” said Chris. The connections these couples have while on the dance floor are not surprising to Alegria owner Gabrielle Forrest. She opened her first dance studio in Turlock in 2014 because she saw a need for adult partner dancing lessons. Forrest started ballroom dancing in her teens and later became an instructor for an Arthur Murray dance studio. While her studio has since changed locations since it opened nine years ago and expanded to include lessons for youth and competition dance groups, partner dancing is still her first love. Forrest continues to teach ballroom to couples and during special workshops, but the partner dancing classes offered at her studio are more in line with what type of dancing is popular in the area. “So, for partner dancing there are places for country swing and line dancing and salsa. That’s why we teach those classes primarily and not really ballroom anymore. People want to be able to use it and what they’re going to use in this area, a 40 to 50-mile radius, are salsa, bachata, line dancing and country
F E B R UA RY/MA R C H 2023
1/24/2023 9:43:28 AM