He lives in the groove

Tiffany Brown

Monday, June 18, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

Patsy Yannatone loves dancing.

He tears up the dance floor with Terry Gunther of Lake Havasu, Ariz., at Hogs and Heifers Saloon on a recent Sunday while Southern Stue plays.

"At 87 years old, I'm going strong and I hope to keep it that way," the native of Rochester, N.Y., says. "If the rhythm is good I'll go up and dance alone. I try to get to the crowd and bring people up. Even the husbands say, 'Go dance with him.'

"Anybody that wants to dance, I'll dance with them. Either they follow me or I follow them. If you like whatever you like I can sure try and do what you like, and maybe better."

Yannatone taught himself to dance in high school and hasn't stopped.

"I got teased for not knowing how to dance, so I learned how to dance by myself ... Every place I went I made up my own steps. I've been dancing my whole life. As I grew older I went to different kinds of steps. I brought some of the old and made up my own new. I've got my own kind of classic rock 'n' roll in dancing."

He doesn't stop even when he sits down.

"I've got the radio on and I dance with the music and if the music is good I'll try to make up steps to that music. With my feet, and my shoulders and my neck, and the rhythm. Even in the morning I don't stop. It's in me."

He's not afraid of running out of energy.

"I can out dance probably anybody, as far as lasting. I dance four hours a day and I can dance one whole hour without stopping. Everybody comes to me and says, 'You are something else.' All the girls wait for me to come and dance.

"I'm happy to dance my life away until I die."

tiffany.brown@lasvegassun.com