When the music swells tomorrow night at Café Sistina, it will mark the morphing of a dancer into a designer. Pam Sandridge sees the event as a coming-out party for her funky, fashionable hand-knitted shrugs as well as a reincarnation of herself.

Most Honolulu folks know Sandridge as a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher. She taught jazz dance at Kamehameha Schools for 13 years and before that taught at Punahou Dance School for five. She later started Big City Productions, teaching street dance and hip-hop in addition to jazz. However, in 1996 she needed a change. "It started to feel formulaic, so I went underground and kept myself from the public eye," she said.

Sandridge began studying Pilates with Lisa Robertson of On Balance Studio in Kailua and achieved certification. She also discovered Feldenkrais, another fitness program that involves body and mind. She put together aspects of all these movement and strength techniques into what she refers to as "Core-ography," which she has been teaching for several years.

Yet she found herself yearning for another creative outlet.

A SON'S INSPIRATION

Sandridge has an adult son, Matthew, who is developmentally disabled and uses a wheelchair. His favorite activities are riding up and down in elevators, greeting everyone with a joyful spirit that's contagious to those who share the little space with him. He also loves to sit at bus stops and watch the buses go by. "He is my pilot, my teacher, my joy, my greatest buddy. He's so inspiring," Sandridge said with full-on motherly pride.

An active — one might even say hyper — person, Sandridge was incapable of simply sitting still, so she looked for a way to keep her hands busy. Shrugs are having a fashion moment — Old Navy to designer boutiques tout their versions. But Sandridge remembered the shrugs her aunt used to knit her for dancewear.

"Back in the '70s dancers used to cut their leggings and put their arms through them" to keep their shoulders warm, Sandridge explained. Her aunt kicked it up a notch by knitting pretty shrugs for her dance-crazy niece.

Last year, the little hobby became a passion as she took her hand-knitted shrugs to a whole new level.

What's a shrug, you ask? Think teensy short sweater with long sleeves. That's a loose definition. Sandridge, however, is incapable of thinking inside the box, so her shrugs have taken a variety of shapes, from long sleeves to sleeveless. Some are mini-capelets that drape over one shoulder.

Sandridge's shrugs have a whimsical feeling about them. Perhaps that's because the process is purely organic: "When I start out (knitting) I don't know where I'm going with it. I just knit away and when it goes on a detour, I go with it. The textures and rhythms of new yarns make it come alive," she explained. "Every one is an original. Even if I tried to repeat a pattern, I wouldn't be able to."

Rea Fox of Kaimuki owns a gold, orange, brown and lavender Shrug Queen shrug. She finds it practical when going from the sweltering outdoors into an air-conditioned building. "But more importantly, it's a work of art," she said. "It's a conversation starter, that's for sure. It's fuzzy and adorable, and people want to touch it and talk about it. It seems to have its own personality — it does something different every time I wear it."

A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

Fox did a Life Card Destiny reading for Sandridge that determined that the dancer/designer is a Queen of Hearts, leading to the Shrug Queen business moniker. The analysis is based on the date of Sandridge's birthday, which is tomorrow, the day of the Shrug Queen fashion show.

Sandridge will be 59, and she sees the milestone as the end of a phase and the beginning of a new year leading up to her big 6-0. "I can see as I look back how my life has been developing me," she said. "Shrugs have launched me into a venue of being an artist and designer. Everything falls into place when you try not to manipulate life. You see there are things you don't have to make happen; you just have to recognize them and go with them."

While for 30 years Sandridge was in front of classrooms and audiences as a dancer/choreographer, the last 10 years have been quiet and low-key. Shrugs could change all that. "My body has been an amazing instrument and I'm really grateful to it for having served me so well. It's joyful now to see that my hands can dance across these happy shrugs."

NO ORDINARY RUNWAY

When asked what form her dance/fashion show will take, she can only shake her head and say, "When I hear what everyone is predicting — I'm not going there. It will all be unexpected and unpredictable. I want to shift people's perceptions and give them something that's out of the block, another point of reference."

It's nearly as new to her as it will be to the audience. "I've never been a designer or done my own fashion show. The process has been a trip," Sandridge said. In the beginning she wanted to choreograph it like dance. "But I had to remind myself that it's all about the shrugs. That's my mantra now: It's all about the shrugs."

She was willing to reveal that there will be story lines in the show's segments. One number will communicate how wearing a girlie shrug may make you stand and move differently, causing a shift in attitude to a more playful outlook. "That's what garments can do for you — reflect different sides of you. It's like gift wrapping: There's something special inside all of us," Sandridge said.

The cast, two men and five women, also has been serendipitous. None of them had ever worked with Sandridge before. "The people in the cast found me. They called and said they were missing dance in their lives and asked if they could be a part of it."

The shrugs are indeed the main attraction but they will be shown in a different, dramatic context and as theater in the round, not on an ordinary runway.

The music also has aspects of serendipity. During the first rehearsal Sandridge tried a soundtrack that didn't work. The same thing happened at the second rehearsal. Then she saw the movie "The Devil Wears Prada," and the soundtrack cinched it.

While Café Sistina might seem an unlikely place for a fashion show, Sandridge feels a special bond with owner Sergio Mitrotti, who is constantly reinventing himself and his surroundings, painting Italianate murals on his restaurant's walls and then repainting them.

The restaurant will shut down after dinner while the dance floor and lighting are set up. Attendees will have to wait until 10 p.m. to enter for the show. Sandridge's buddy Bob Harmon of H.L. Lighting provides lighting services for the show, adding another element of theatricality.

It has all come together in the same way the shrugs are made: no seams and more than a soupcon of serendipity. The whole shrug experience, Sandridge said, is replete with "synchronicity."

"I feel it's preparing me for something," she said.

Stand by.

Reach Paula Rath at prath@honoluluadvertiser.com.