What Am I Doing Here With 20 Year Olds? (Aging and Dance)

This lovely little piece recently came out in the Post about what Liz Lerman, that seminal figure in dance  known for mixing generations in her company and works, is doing lately and more specifically, how she's changing as a dancer and choreographer whose body doesn't spring right off the floor as readily as it once did.  Read the piece here.

This subject has been on my mind as I jump in and out of class and auditions in my new city of Washington D.C.  As always, I keep getting older, but the dancers in auditions stay the same age.  In my last audition, I was with one other dancer who approached my age and 9 others who were straight out of college.  This was the same in Chicago.  No judgement, just an observation.

As I interact with my fellow dancers around D.C., I learn that there "isn't much of a culture of taking class" among the working dancers here.  I found this to be largely true when I lived in Minneapolis back in the early 2000's.  I wonder if it has to do with the size of the city or, as my new friend intimated, a culture that has been created, or that dancers have fallen into.  I am reminded of what Zenon Dance Company Founding Artistic Director Linda Z. Andrews once told me about company member Greg Waletski: The reason he's been around so long (Andrews is not shy about releasing dancers who aren't up to snuff) and is so talented is because he takes class every day (company members got free class).  The way I remember him from my time in Minneapolis was that he had no ego about the day to day work it took to keep up technique and the humility it takes to do that work in public.  I really started paying attention to Greg and noticed a definite difference in the grounded and settled quality of his dancing.  This was a dancer you could trust to catch you.

This sense of consistency has been a mantra, a thread, a theme of my personal development over the last 4 or 5 years.  It's only been the last 4 or 5 years, because I battled against that culture of inconsistency.  That idea of "I've made it, now I can stop", or "I have rehearsal every day so I don't need class".  I've said it before and I'll say it again, rehearsal is not the same as class.  I really had to struggle with my own personal habits to find consistency in my movement practice, but once I did, low and behold, most of my chronic injuries fell away.  

Now, I don't make it to dance class every day.  I'm unemployed at the moment and my credit card has a limit that is looming near.  But, I move every day.  I take a free trial at a yoga studio, I find workshops, I give myself class, I try a new form of movement.  This consistency is what I use to keep my body moving.  If I take a few days off, I can't get off the ground.  I will keep dancing.  A long time.  This will be my fountain of youth.  

I refuse to stop.  Liz mentioned that "'the boomers are never going to let other people be on stage'",  they're saying "'No, this is my world'".  This won't be exclusive to boomers.  It won't.  This is the new cultural shift.  Just ask anyone in generation X, Y, or whatever the new one is called.  It's a little victory against ageism.  I look forward to being the next dancer to say, "I'm staying in the limelight.  So we're all just going to have to keep working together." 

I'm still interested in crazy physical feats, I'm still interested in subtlety, I hope to keep choreographing towards both ends and learning to teach towards both ends.  

The last musing that takes me into the rest of my day is this idea from Liz: "I have three dancers in their 50s, and I don’t think of them as older. I think of them as absolutely let’s-go-to-work. I am not treating them specially because they are older, the way I would have treated older dancers before." 

This I bet I'm guilty of treating older dancers "specially" (in that slightly patronizing way, as opposed to the "special because of the wisdom they hold" kind of way) because of their age.  I'm definitely going to take a look at this in my teaching and my dancing and see where it goes.

That's all.  Peace out.  I've got to walk the dog.