Heather Kraft has been a dancer for 21 years and has been involved with social dance for five years. She loves all types of social dance, but the Blues gets her every time. She is learning a lot about office procedures with Bonnie Thomas and is loving it! An experienced dance instructor, Heather is teaching in some of our summer practica.

Dean Paton abandoned the baseball diamond for the dance hall in 1994, and fell so hopelessly in love with waltz that he founded the Valse Cafe Orchestra, an ensemble committed to the art of playing music for dancers. When he teaches rotary waltz, Dean stresses mastering the core of the dance - turning left, turning right, transitioning between the two -- then helps dancers use this foundation as a platform on which to build organic, graceful movement as well as a few elegant moves.

Stefanie Karlin recently relocated to Seattle after spending the past three years in Chicago, where she danced with and worked as company manager for The Moving Architects, a modern dance company. Stef is looking forward to growing the NW Dance family through the promotions department as well as meeting and collaborating with all of our fabulous volunteers. When she's not dancing, Stef works as a yoga teacher and personal trainer. She's excited about her new home in Seattle and looks forward to meeting all of you.
NW Dance has always relied on the help of our great volunteers, Stefanie will help you get involved!

Debby Bacharach started dancing with Living Traditions (the precursor to Northwest Dance) in 1999 and has taken a class nearly every session since, and that includes dancing through two pregnancies. She finds that every opportunity to get more involved with dance—learning to lead, doing the zydeco intensives, going to the dance camp at Seabeck—has brought her more joy and community.
Debby also serves on NW Dance's Board of Directors

Having enrolled in a beginning swing class at the legendary Living Traditions Dance, Kris began his immersion in social dance some time late in the last century. In the early years of the new millennium Kris became a teaching assistant for Living Traditions and later Northwest Dance Network.

Over the years he's taken a gazillion classes and workshops in a lot of styles of partner dance, but swing dancing, especially Lindy Hop, is still his favorite. When he's not taking a class or at a dance, he's practicing piano or guitar, reading a book, riding his bicycle or supervising a prostate cancer prevention research project at Swedish Medical Center, where he is employed.

Sheila has danced her whole life . . . mostly alone in her living room! She dabbled in tap as a child, ballroom as a teenager and "boogied" with her husband, Jack, throughout most of her adult life.

In 1996, five months after a transcontinental move to Seattle with hubby, she got serious about dance. She came to NW Dance in a roundabout route: ballroom lessons at a studio, swing at Seattle Central Community College, lindy at Hep Cat Productions and a Frankie Manning Workshop and social dance at Living Traditions.

After several years of lessons, Sheila became a volunteer dancer for NW Dance and finally decided to become a TA. She thoroughly enjoys teaching one-on-one, giving little tips and helping fledging dancers become proficient ones.

Dancing was always enjoyable for Sheila but she's discovered that it's not just a pastime, but a passion. "Keep dancing" is not just a saying for Sheila, it's a way of life. She hopes to dance until her feet drop off . . . or she's knocked off her feet. . . whichever comes first.

Steve Afrin's passion for partner dancing and his desire to share that joy with beginning students shows in his enthusiasm in classes and workshops. Steve took his first Swing 1 class with Living Traditions in Apr. 2003 and never looked back. Once he learned the new concepts of leading, following, and partner connection, he quickly started taking every class he could with eight registered classes during one six week session as his all-time personal best.

Enjoying Swing, Blues, Waltz, and all other forms of social dance, Steve particularly enjoys the Latin beats of Salsa and Cha Cha and has taken many classes, workshops, and private lessons with Northwest Dance instructors, other dance schools in the Seattle area, and with visiting instructors who occasional pass through town. Steve feels tremendous gratitude for how partner dancing has helped transform his life and hopes that he can share that powerful feeling with other dancers in the dance community.

Steve has also enjoyed teaching private lessons to students to help them improve their skills on the social dance floor and to prepare them for intermediate level workshops. You may also sometimes see Steve offering his technical expertise and assistance to Northwest Dance instructors and staff in classes, workshops, and even at an occasional dance. He has worked off and on as an audio engineer in television and radio over a couple decades and enjoys volunteering his time to help Northwest Dance in many different capacities

Lise Baadh started partner dancing in 1994 as a competitive ballroom dancer. After six years of studying and competing she turned her interests to social dancing where she could dance to a variety of music and experience a true lead-and-follow partnership. Then, after discovering the world of Argentine tango and studying with Michelle Badion, Lise became a true dancer. She now frequents the many dance venues in Seattle, and enjoys every form of dance from Argentine tango and ballroom, to swing, waltz, zydeco and latin dancing. In 2006 she founded DANCE IT!, a program that provides free social dance lessons to high school students. Since then, and with the support of NWDance, this program has inspired over 900 local teenagers to dance. Lise also likes to paint, hike, and play tennis.

More informaton at Dance-It.com

Yvonne began her (second) dance life when she began taking classes from Living Traditions in 2003 (she originally took classes from Walter and Nancyanna Dill in 1981). Dancing (and swing in particular) soon became a passion, so she decided to get more involved by becoming a class registrar. That led to being recruited as part of the team that helped transition Living Traditions into the current nonprofit organization, Northwest Dance Network. Yvonne worked as volunteer co-director with Don Morgan for about six months. She was then hired to manage the books and the web site (which she continues to do today). When approached by the board, Yvonne agreed to take over the interim executive director position, while a search was made for the permanent director (May - August 2009). Now she's back to managing the web, finances and technology.

When not working with NDN, Yvonne is a professional organizer, specializing in finances, technology and office management (or you might find her at Dick's Drive-in, her other addiction).