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Dance is fluid, always moving and changing. Principal performers make their entrances, and their exits.

So it is with Anacortes’ only dance studio, which is experiencing a number of major changes this year, including a new name, the debut of new executive director Glynna Goff-Eloe and the final bow of veteran teacher Paula Clancey.

Fidalgo DanceWorks, previously The Dance Center, honors Clancey’s retirement by dedicating its Saturday performance of “The Nutcracker Ballet” to her.

“Since this will be Paula’s last Nutcracker and she is retiring as a teacher as well as artistic director, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t let her leave without acknowledging her incredible contribution,” Goff-Eloe said.

A gifted dancer herself, Clancey has had a major impact on arts education in Anacortes for three decades.

“Paula is a force, and I can hardly fathom what she has accomplished in Anacortes, let alone in her lifetime. I run into grown women who, years ago, had Paula as their first dance teacher, and are still dancing today,” Goff-Eloe said.

Clancey started teaching dance in Anacortes in 1978, when she joined the Artists in the Schools program. She was president of Anacortes Arts and Crafts Festival, now Anacortes Arts Festival, from 1979 to 1986 and president of Anacortes Arts Foundation in 1980 to 1982 and 1984 to 1985. She was president of Anacortes Youth Arts in 2000 to 2004. In 2002 she received the Anacortes School District’s Walter Brodniak Cultural Education Award for her contributions to arts education.

She taught from 1994 to 2001 at Fidalgo Performing Arts School of Dance. After Sonya McNett sold the studio to John Bishop, Clancey and Lorrie Steele founded the Dance Center so they could offer all types of dance, rather than focus strictly on professional ballet. Clancey was an artistic director there from 2001 to 2008.

Over the years Fidalgo DanceWorks expanded to serve more than 200 students. It puts on two major productions a year.

“None of us would be here if it they hadn’t made sacrifices and worked their derrieres off to get this going,” Goff-Eloe said.

Clancey has taught and choreographed dance for 40 years. She started her 16-year career as a professional dancer at 14 when she joined the Ballet Guild of Cleveland.

“I was very successful as a professional dancer. I was a soloist always, from the time I was 4,” she said. “I’ve been very spoiled.”

Clancey was a performing member of Cleveland Civic Ballet until 1965. She studied modern dance with Shirley Wimmer and earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Ohio University in 1969. Wimmer, who danced with Martha Graham, recognized Clancey’s intuitive ability to teach.

“She sat me down and said ‘Paula, you should be a teacher,’” Clancey said.

After a year of post-graduate dance study at Ohio State, Clancey taught dance at a school for girls for four years. As a soloist at Fairmont Dance Theater, she performed pieces choreographed by James Waring, Twyla Tharp and Raymond Johnson.

She and her husband Gary Clancey, an orthopedic surgeon, moved to Seattle in 1973. During four years as a soloist with Dance Theater Seattle, she performed pieces choreographed by Donald McHale, John Wilson and Karen Steele, and was studio director and summer workshop coordinator. In 1976 to 1978 she was a performer and school director with Dance Theater Seattle/Bill Evans Dance Company.

The Clanceys moved to Skagit County in 1979. While Seattle dancers wondered how she would fare in the wilds of Skagit County, she quickly found places to make a difference at Valley Center for the Arts in Mount Vernon and Children’s Repertory Dance Theater, where she was director until 1984. She continued master teaching for a few years and her last professional performance was in 1981. During that time she taught and choreographed aspiring professionals.

Along the way she had children Erin, now 26, and Owen, 24.

Teaching proved to be the right course for Clancey, and the Anacortes community proved to be a good place for career and family. She said she is lucky she was able to teach many of her students from age 4 until they graduated from high school. She recently heard from one of her earliest students, who still enjoys dancing more than 30 years later.

“The kids that last with you for a good 10 years, they’re going to do something. They’re going to dance,” she said.

Students learn much more than steps when they study dance.

“You’re teaching them about life, discipline, how to take your failures with your successes,” she said.

While dance has a totally physical aspect, it’s also artistic and emotional, she said. Her job is coaching students to become physically and emotionally strong enough to perform.

“I like that part. I understand what they need to walk on that stage,” she said.

One essential element is passion.

“Dance is different from other kinds of physical activity. You have to feel the emotion to do it,” she said.

She’s taught all ages and skills — beginners and professionals, toddlers and retirees.

“I taught those 3-year-old boys last year and I really did like that,” she said.

The fundamentals are the same for all of them, with variations on different skips and locomotive moves.

“Your tool for your dance is your body,” she said. “You’ve got two legs. They can only do so many kinds of weight transfers.”

Clancey has also inspired other teachers.

“I myself have learned a great deal about teaching from Paula, and I’m sure I’ll be picking her brain for a very long time to come. Her strength and focus are definitely things that inspire me,” Goff-Eloe said.

Clancey will still be involved with Fidalgo DanceWorks from time to time.

“I’ll be substitute teacher and I am still very involved with ‘The Nutcracker’ since most of the major dances are my choreography,” she said. “But not day-to-day teaching. It takes a lot of energy. I’m in good shape for my age, but it’s hard.”

Clancey estimates she has choreographed 150 dances during her career. DanceWorks’ “Nutcracker” will show her influence for years to come.

“My first ‘Nutcracker’ was in 1996. ‘The Waltz of the Flowers’ is the same basic dance I did then, but it now has more depth, is more complicated and is done en pointe,” Clancey said.

Her choreography from 1996 also includes the Russian and Arabian dances and the soldiers’ march. She first choreographed “Waltz of the Snowflakes” in 1999. She said co-choreographer Jeanne Robson choreographed the soloist Dew Drop.

Goff-Eloe said DanceWorks co-founder Lorrie Steele is not retiring, but has stepped down as an artistic director to focus on teaching and directing “The Nutcracker.” She is still an active staff member at the studio.

“One of the wonderful things about our teachers at Fidalgo DanceWorks is that they all have college degrees and professional dance experience. We are very lucky to have a whole staff of divas, which also makes for lively staff meetings,” Goff-Eloe said.

Clancey said the school is in good hands with manager Jean McCracken, board president Lynne Simonsen and Goff-Eloe.

“I’m very happy to have passed the torch to Glynna as executive director,” Clancey said. “She is excellent.”

One of the first changes under Goff-Eloe is a name to reflects a new phase for the studio.

“We wanted a new name that would encompass a broader connection with the community and with the arts, be contemporary, as well as say something about where we come from. Fidalgo DanceWorks seemed to fit that bill,” she said. “It tells you how proud we are to offer dance to the community of Fidalgo Island, and I loved the play of words with DanceWorks — dance works, works in progress, works of art, the hard work of dance, a functional working studio and so on,” she said.

The energizing new name will help staff as the school continues to grow.

“I know it continues to inspire me and my vision for the studio,” Goff-Eloe said.