Pati Cloutier was dancing before she could walk, according to her sister, Barbara Prager.
“My strongest childhood memory is of her just dancing into the room,” Prager said. “She was always dancing.”
For 40 years, Cloutier has been sharing her passion for dance with the children of the Monadnock region.
“Pati was always a little different; she always believed in bringing dance to everybody,” Prager said. “She always welcomed boys in the studio. She’s always been non-competitive. It’s just all about the love of dance.”
Cloutier agrees: Dance is “all I ever wanted to do.”
“I am very blessed I have been able to do this for a living,” she said. “Sometimes I pinch myself. I can’t believe it has been 40 years that I have been making a living in this business; I am just so fortunate.”
Cloutier recalls how she has taught students from ages 3 to 100.
“I teach chair tap at the memory units at Rivermead and at Scott Farrar, and I had a student who was 100 years old,” Cloutier said. “It is just incredible working with the memory care patients. I have special tap shoe covers; people just light up.”
Cloutier and her husband, retired ConVal biology teacher Ken Cloutier (of ConVal “Ocean Bowl” fame), are also at the 40-year mark.
The couple moved to the region in 1985, renting their first home from the DelRossi family.
“We’re musicians and we needed space so we could make noise, and we saw a card at the music shop, and that’s how we met David and Elaina Del Rossi,” Cloutier said. “We’re still friends, and we still play for them, all these years later.”
Together, the Cloutiers perform as the folk band Ivy Chumm.
After moving to the Monadnock region, Cloutier transitioned from independent teaching, which had her “running all over the state,” to instructing for the New Hampshire Dance Institute, which she did for 13 years at South Meadow Middle School. At NHDI, Cloutier met Christina Ahern, who became her longtime partner in the Monadnock Performing Arts Academy in Peterborough. Cloutier and Ahern ran MPAA together for 14 years, from 1999 to 2012. In 2013, they went their separate ways and Cloutier founded Peterborough Dance Theatre, relocating to a studio in the Strand building.
One of her biggest challenges over the years was coping with COVID, when her studio had to hold classes by Zoom for 11 months.
“I was so grateful the families stayed with me,” she said. “Parents were desperate to keep kids busy and keep them moving, so we did that.”
Cloutier hired the production company Inferno Dance to create a video of her students dancing in a green room space at the Peterborough Plaza. Inferno Dance then added the backgrounds for each dance, creating a video of the final recital.
“Looking back, it is so surreal. I can’t even believe we did all that and got through it,” she says.
Cloutier says she has “never actually thought about” how many dance students she has had in the past four decades.
“Counting when I taught NHDI, it must be in the thousands,” she says.
Since she teaches from ages 3 to 18, she works with many of the same young people for 15 years or more, playing a unique role in their lives. Many come back and teach in her studio or join performances after they graduate.
Cloutier says she has a soft spot in her heart for teenagers.
“For many years, I really loved teaching the 6-to-10-year-olds the best,” she said. “But the older I get, the more I have really embraced the teens, with all their energy and intensity and everything that they bring; I really love them, and I love seeing what they become.”
Many of Cloutier’s students have gone on to dance in college, dance professionally, or have gone on to teach dance to others. Many stay in touch, reaching out to “Miss Pati” when they come home to visit, sometimes bringing groups of former dancers together.
When asked what some of her former students have gone on to do in the world of dance, Cloutier declines to pick favorites.
“I don’t want to mention any specific student’s achievements; there are so many of them doing amazing things, and I know I would forget someone if I tried to mention a few,” she says. “I have just been so fortunate to meet and teach so many wonderful students.”
At the heart of Cloutier’s philosophy of dance is non-competitiveness. For her, it’s about dancing for the sheer joy of it.
“Early on, I made a vow: My studio would be non-competitive. The dance competitions did not used to be a thing–and they just keep ramping up,” Cloutier said. “When I went out on my own, I made a very clear decision to stay non-competitive. I didn’t know if it would work or not. It was a question of will this work? And as it turned out, people actually sought us out.”
Cloutier says she knows that parents and dancers have different philosophies, and that some seek the competitive track.
“The competitions are very expensive. The families have to travel, they plan vacations around the competition. Not all families choose that so that’s why we are here,” she said. “My whole goal is to give students as many opportunities to perform as they can get, to expose them to guest artists, to take them to performances. I try to keep the focus on the art of dance.”
Cloutier also takes her classes on field trips to like-minded studios and to see performers.
“My former students frequently come back to perform with the school and I try to give them opportunities to perform right here locally,” she said.
Cloutier says parents often tell her that Peterborough Dance Theatre recitals are “different from typical dance recitals.”
“It is so funny–people will tell me, ‘My husband actually stayed awake!’ or ‘He wanted to stay for the whole thing!'” Cloutier says with a laugh.
Cloutier also teaches choreography to students who are interested and gives them the opportunity to design dances in the year-end show.
All of PDT’s recitals are organized around a theme and have a “learning component.” Recent themes include “The Elements,” “Festival of Nations,” and most recently, “What Will I Be?” about different professions.
Prager says the Cloutier family is “just so proud of Pati.”
“Our family is scattered all over, but we always try to go to all her big performances. They each have a theme, and last year’s, about professions and work and what people do–we thought it was just amazing,” Prager said. “That is a pretty unusual theme for a dance recital, but that is Pati. She’s just incredible, doing this for so many years and reaching so many students. She has really made an impact on the region.”
Cloutier is also the International Finger Dance Champion. In 2008, she won an online competition sponsored by Proctor & Gamble in which she competed against finger and hand dancers from around the world using her finger puppets “Yvonne and Yvette.”
“It started when I had a tap dancing partner at school and I was learning the dances. We had those desks that opened up, and I could hide my hands, and I was like, ‘I want to dance my part and I want to dance my partner’s part, ‘” Cloutier says with a laugh. “It is actually much harder than people think.”
Cloutier looks back in awe at 40 years of programs, photos and memories. She notes that she is now teaching a second generation of dancers.
“I am just so grateful to the community for supporting me, for giving back, for creating this opportunity,” she said. “I have had such wonderful families who support me and have kept allowing me to do this. It’s been a wonderful life.”
For more information about Peterborough Dance Theatre, visit peterboroughdancetheatre.com.