The Dancing Man

Jim Ray keeps boots stomping to the beat

By Morgan Steger / Special to The Independent Friday, Mar. 28, 2008

Sometimes Jim Ray's cowboy boots are the only footwear stomping out the right steps.

But that doesn't matter one bit -- Ray's Clovis Adult Education dance classes are all about fun and the dancing man, decked out in black from the brim of his cowboy hat to the tips of his ever-moving boots, is just the one to provide it.

Ray, 56, is a staple of Clovis Adult's Older Adult Program, where he teaches 10 classes covering all genres of western dance to some 1,500 students a month.

During one such class, he patiently called out steps on his microphone headset as the over-50 crowd that made up the bulk of his class turned, shuffled and toe-tapped along.

The hardest part of breaking down a line dance to a group of adults? "Getting them to be patient with themselves," Ray said. "I'm patient with everybody." Everybody can dance, he said, people just think they don't know how. "You can take a guy who's walking down the street fine, tell him he's dancing, and he walks all crooked," Ray said.

Ray, who estimates that he can learn a brand-new dance well enough to teach it in less than 15 minutes, was no "Boot Scootin' Boogie" expert 15 years ago when he took to the floor as a neophyte dancer at Jim's Place. The bar, now closed, was once the place to learn how to shake it like a cowboy in Old Town Clovis.

Ray joined the bar's Grapevine Express competition dance team, became a dance instructor within months and won the United Country Western Dance Council World Championship in team dancing with his wife, Tina, in 1994.

Jim's Place led Ray, a former appliance repairman, to Clovis Adult, where he now coaches his own line dancing teams to competitions around California.

To most in Ray's classes, it's not about competitions and ribbons. Dancing is about staying active and soaking up Ray's enthusiasm.

"He's a barrel of fun, keeps everybody laughing," said Price Ford, 66, who has been taking Ray's classes for 10 years.

"He's perfect for the job he has," said student Barbara Seidle. "Jim's class has been very good for me because I lost a lot of my family. Coming here to this class has been a lifesaver for me -- I don't know what I would do without it." Elena Giroux, Jim's unofficial assistant, has been taking classes from him for over 10 years and helps him keep the deluge of school-related paperwork in order. She said the key to Jim's success with seniors is his willingness to provide support.

"He cares about everybody," Giroux said. "He listens, he pays attention to them." In the ultimate tribute to Ray's star status as a teacher, his class once had shirts made that listed the names of all of the dances Ray has choreographed on the front, with a snapshot of the dancing man himself on the back.

The shirt-clad class did a line dancing turn when Ray entered the room, showing him a sea full of bobbing Jim Ray-themed backs. "I almost fell over when I walked into class and saw that," he said.

The gesture was just a way to say thanks to Ray for giving countless seniors a reason to shuffle that has nothing to do with aches and pains. "We don't feel like seniors, we're so active here," Giroux said.

Friendly Faces is an occasional series about people in Clovis who make it a great place to live. To nominate someone to be profiled in this series, please e-mail Patti J. Lippert at plippert@clovisindependent.com