Dance instructor featured on PBS show

Roz Kristoffersen has been dancing for 81 years.

“My mother started me when I was four years old,” she said last week.

In the coming weeks, the 85-year-old dance instructor will be featured on the Montana Public Television program “Backroads of Montana.”

“They followed me around for two days,” she said. “My segment is six minutes long.”

Kristoffersen has been teaching dance at Flathead Valley Community College for 32 years and is still going strong. She grew up in Ohio and then Flint, Mich., where her father owned a restaurant.

She moved to Montana in 1952. Her husband at the time liked to hunt, and during a trip to Canada, they swung through the Flathead and saw what they liked. The bought the Hungry Horse Motel and ran it until the late 1970s. At the time, it was the only motel in the area with a pool.

Kristoffersen said she has no favorite dance. She teaches line dancing, waltzes, square dancing, you name it.

“They’re all good,” she said.

Dancing has kept her young beyond her years.

“You got to keep exercising,” she said. “My exercise is dancing.”

Over her career, she’s taught more than 10,000 people to dance. There have been 15 marriages that she knows of as a result of her classes. And divorces?

“I think there were two. I can’t remember for sure,” she laughed.

Today Kristoffersen lives in Kalispell with her artist husband Arvid. They’ve been married for more than 30 years.

Kristoffersen will appear with dancers from Columbia Falls, Whitefish and Bigfork on the “Backroads” program on Saturday, May 23, at 5 p.m. and Thursday, May 28, at 7:30 p.m.