Pagination Not Working – WP_Query with &Paged=

I’ve got a custom WP_Query being called as an array and I’m not sure how to call “&paged=” when it is contained in an array.

Normally it would be:

wp_query->query('showposts=10'.'&paged='.$paged .'cat=classes')

But for some reason the same code when presented as an array is not working:

<?php
                $current_date = date('ymd');
                $recentEvents = new WP_Query();
                $recentEvents->query(array(
                    'category_name' => 'classes',
                    'meta_key' => '_date_compare',
                    'meta_compare' => '>=',
                    'meta_value' => $current_date,
                    'orderby' => 'meta_value',
                    'order' => 'ASC',
					'showposts' => 10,
					'&paged' => $paged
                ));
                if ($recentEvents->have_posts()) : while ($recentEvents->have_posts()) : $recentEvents->the_post(); ?>