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Reprint from Mill Creek View-Volume IX-Issue 18-Summer 2001 Minding My Own Business

Professional entertainers show kids how to perform......... ....."Performing is what makes a difference. Having many opportunities to perform teaches students how to be a pro on stage and think on their feet. This often translates into better grades in school and more fun doing oral reports."-Pamela Hohner

Learning new things isn't always easy, especially learning to be comfortable in front of an audience. Robert and Pamela Hohner provide a lifetime of professional performance experience as teachers at Express Yourself Studios, so even the shyest can learn a few performance skills. Robert began tap dancing with his brother Chuck at the age of four. By the thrid grade, they were appearing regularly on televisions's "Starlet Stairway". When Robert was 12, he and his brother were the youngest ever invited to perform with the international folk dancing group, the Silver Spurs, for the next eight years. Even at such a young age, Robert says he loved to teach and improvise new things for the Silver Spurs while traveling throughout the U.S. and Canada. As a senior member, he taught new members dance techniques and also added gymnastics. While in college at the University of New Mexico, he competed nationally with his award-winning gymnastic routines until 1972. Pamela Hohner's performance career also started early, at age eight, with ballet, jazz, and voice lessons. She was performing in a girls' trio by the sixth grade. When Pamela entered high school, she and a friend teamed up to create "Pamie and Patty," a song-and -dance duo, and later joined the international group "Up With People," performing for years at many of the same places as the Silver Spurs in the U.S. and Canada. After much career searching, Pamela says she always came back to singing and settled in Las Vegas as singer and impressionist in many of the city's most popular clubs. As Pamela Holland, her Las Vegas name, she did impressions of Marilyn Monroe, Mae Wes and Peggy Lee. In 1996, received a fine arts degree from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. The plans for the studio came about in the spring of 1996 after a choir audition for Pamela's longtime voice student, Whitney Schmella. Smella's mother Laurel suggested that Pamela form a children's performance group, since she had such a great background for it. "I wanted to include dance, so I wanted robert to do it with me. With his tap dance background, what a combination we made!" said Pamela. Robert also insisted on including gymnastics and floor work. by September of that year, they had created a singing and dancing group and were giving shows throughout the area with only six kids. Currently, the studio offers beginning gymnastics and all kinds of dancing, from ballet and tap to jitterbug and ballroom. Pamela also teaches painting and drawing in three summer camp programs along with her year round voice instruction. "This allows us to do what we love the most: to help kids learn leadership, stage skills, self-esteem, confidence and teamwork through these classes and our many performances," said Pamela. "Self-motivation, goalsetting, and achieving high standards are what we are really teaching," added Robert. Through Express Yourself Studios, Pamela and Robert say young and old can learn how to express themselves and find creativity from within. Express Yourself literature boasts, "Anyone and everyone can learn these important life skills."

phone 425-482-2075 email xys@mindspring.com Website by Pamela Hohner Graphic Design, Copyright © 2001 Express Yourself Studios, Mill Creek, WA. All right reserved.