Press

Doin’ an Irish dance: That’s what a group gets together regularly in Tigard & Tualatin to do for fun

By Elena Boryczka
The Times, Mar 13, 2008

When Sam Keator sees someone walk into the Tigard Grange on SW Pacific Hwy for his Wednesday night Irish dance classes (PLEASE NOTE: Weekly classes have moved to the Winona Grange in Tualatin on Thursday nights!), he expects at least one thing: that they try to have a good time.”The biggest joy I have is when you see someone who has never done this before. They’re just bashful, shy, their face is blah, and before you know it they’re smiling and the spirits come out,” he said. “And what better joy? It’s more than money for me. It’s just part of what I love.”

Tualatin’s Sam Keator brings the music home

Posted by The Oregonian February 09, 2008 02:00AM
Categories: News/Feature
John Givot

Sam Keator has some rules for his dancing classes: “Keep moving, keep smiling, have fun.” Sam Keator and his wife, Anne Doherty, are having some friends over tonight –friends such as world-class Irish fiddler Kevin Burke, who’ll play a house concert with pianist Cal Scott in the music room Keator built on the back of his Tualatin home.The Wee Céilí (kay-lee) Room is a friendly space of warm, rough-textured wood and great acoustics, a perfect place for 40 people to watch and hear music being made. Hand drums and a County Donegal flag hang on the walls. There is no stage, just a couple of chairs for the players, who sit nearly knee-to-knee with the first row of listeners. Nobody is more than 16 feet from the stage.

Passions: Sam Keator
Jigs, reels and his Irish heritage lead to wife and zeal for teaching

Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Oregonian
submitted by Ian Ruder : ianruder@gmail.com
At the All-Ireland Cultural Society of Portland’s weekly drop-in dancing classes, they’ll tell you how hard it is to keep your feet still once the music starts, and you need look no further than instructor Sam Keator to know they are right.Nine years ago Keator, who lives in Tualatin, was working in the lumber industry and likely wouldn’t have even described himself as Irish. Then he heard the music.

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