BEAUFORT, S.C. — Writer Pat Conroy does a mean Carolina shag, and he's ready to "die in peace" after teaching the step to Barbra Streisand.

Streisand, who directs and stars in a film based on Conroy's novel "The Prince of Tides," saw the dance in the book and asked the writer to explain.

Conroy, 45, went one better. He showed her.

"I have taught Barbra Streisand to shag and now I can die in peace," he said last week in a telephone interview from his home in Atlanta.

Parts of the movie are being shot in Beaufort.

Streisand, 48, plays a New York psychiatrist who treats a psychotic poet in the chilling family saga set in New York and Sullivans Island.