Still Stepping Out

A dance class to celebrate Seniors Week by Creative Caring's lead facilitator, Diane Busuttil
Photo: © asparay

Published in Limelight, July 2024

Are you over 60? Then join a growing club

As of June 2023, one in six Australians is over the age of 65, and three in 10 are aged 75 to 84, according to the Institute of Health and Welfare’s demographic profile of older Australians. The consequences of this demographic shift are playing out through the arts as much as the broader community

 Within the dance world, older folk are discovering or rekindling a love of ballet classes. Others are participating in community dance groups and appearing in productions. Classical dancers are using their bodies wisely and dancing at their peak until their early 40s (which is early 60s in non-classical years). And septuagenarian, nonagenarian, even centenarian dancers are being sought for the ageless grace and wisdom they bring to the stage and screen

 There’s an age-quake going on around here

Seniors Dance Classes
The desire of older adults to remain active has seen a steady rise in seniors ballet classes over the last decade. The West Australian Ballet and the Queensland Ballet hold popular seniors classes within their respective programs of community dance classes

 Dr Sue Mayes AM — who is the Director of Artistic Health at the Australian Ballet — points out that ‘what joints need is to move, and they need muscles around those joints to protect them. Dance is fun and social, and music helps you to move with fluidity. You can take your limbs through a full range of movement and that’s what joints need’

For its part, the Royal Academy of Dance heeded this burgeoning market with the launch in 2017 of its Silver Swans initiative, which trains RAD teachers all around the world, including Australia, to safely teach ballet to the over-55s. Since then, the RAD has encouraged older students to further develop artistry and musicality by taking examinations

Georgia Dostal is a teacher and podcaster who owns a studio on the Gold Coast called Balanced Ballerinas. She teaches ballet to adult students aged 18 to 85 and also offers a Grade 3 RAD exam class. She says, ‘Most students approach me and say, “I know this sounds silly, but …” when they’re considering taking it.’ In her view, the Grade 3 provides sufficient challenge for a beginner and she encourages students to enjoy the process of preparing for the exam rather than focusing on passing it. One of the candidates in her current class is 70 and is doing it simply because she loves ballet

What committed students adore is the attempt to master ballet’s exacting technique. This doesn’t suit every senior mover. Diane Busuttil was once a contemporary dancer and now describes herself as ‘using dance and movement as a creative and social tool for older bodies.’ She runs a program through the Sydney Opera House called ‘Spring for Seniors’ that combines gentle movement with storytelling and physical exploration in an imaginative blend

‘Many people tell me there’s nowhere else to do a dance class that’s creative and involves working with others and using choreographic structures,’ she says. Her participants find the sessions welcoming and accessible because ‘we’re not there to do high kicks and triple spins’

Community Dance
For those seeking to perform, many community dance troupes embrace older dancers. Some of these are well established, long-standing ensembles with bold, inventive programs of work and strong missions to dismantle stereotypes

The Grey Panthers in the Northern Territory has been active since 1988 and is associated with the Darwin-based Tracks Dance. Its participants are mainly over 60 and provide the young ones with powerful exemplars of vibrant ageing

MADE (Modern Artists Dance Experience) has been performing in Tasmania since 2005. Its approach is to combine the educative and health benefits of dance with performance. It creates their mesmerising works by partnering professional with non-professional dancers

Also formed in 2005, Somebody’s Aunt is part of the Australian Dance Party and seeks to bring a political edge to its dance storytelling. Their founder and leader is Jane Ingall. The ‘Aunts’ perform in unconventional spaces — art galleries, cafes, bushland and, only occasionally, theatres

Somebody’s Aunt is based in Canberra, as is the GOLD group which stands for Growing Old Disgracefully. They glistened into life in 2011, the brainchild of Artistic Directors Liz Lea and Philip Piggin. GOLD is now produced by the Canberra Dance Theatre and directed by Piggin with Jackie Simmons

Sue Healey is a pioneering choreographer and filmmaker. In 2014, she made a documentary, The Golds, that celebrates the company’s jouissance and has just completed a second, Lake Song, that looks at where GOLD is now. ‘These older dancers have been working together for 10 years and I was blown away to see their progression,’ she says. ‘They are exquisite. Ten years ago, they struggled with the simplest things, now they’re professional. To see an older dancer improve shows it doesn’t have to be downhill’

Fine Lines Dance is Melbourne-based and was founded by Dr Katrina Rank, who is also its Artistic Director. She has built a 60-strong community of mature dancers who gather for classes, workshops and dance projects, which she choreographs and produces. These are either filmed or performed live in short seasons

‘My group is different,’ Rank says. While she does take those who haven’t danced before, ‘they have to find their feet quickly.’ She finds that the demands of performing allows her dancers to ‘focus their skills and artistry. It asks them to step up’

Rank’s purpose for Fine Lines Dance is to render the overlooked, disparaged older dancer visible. At first, she thought to produce dance works that confronted ageism, but ‘in the end that felt wrong,’ she says. ‘People can see we’re old. We don’t need to do work about being old. Let’s do work that’s interesting to us’

At the Ballet
When Sue Mayes first started working with the Australian Ballet as a physiotherapist in 1995, ‘dancers were focused on today and tomorrow, and not as concerned about how they’d be physically in the future as they are now.’ They were frequently injured, often with ankle pain. At first, she spent her days coping with ‘the barrage of sore bodies. There were a lot of tears.’ At that time, female dancers typically retired when they were 32 and male dancers held out until 35

Once the company appointed a second physiotherapist, Mayes had time to investigate the cause of the injuries. ‘You need to see what the problem is before you try to fix it,’ she says. She tested every dancer and discovered that posterior ankle pain was linked to poor calf endurance. The company instituted a regime of single-leg calf raises at the end of barre work and ‘it’s rare for us to operate on an ankle now’

From there, Mayes gradually instituted a strategic Injury Management and Prevention Program based on careful research, testing and education. Consequently, the dancers understand better how and when to push their bodies and trust the Artistic Health Team to rehabilitate them when they’re injured. Generally, dancers undergo a least one rehabilitation in their career, but ‘this idea that they get older and injuries catch up with them is not true,’ Mayes says. The focus of her team is to tend to them without interfering with their artistry. ‘We’re just supporting them in achieving their absolute optimal level of performance, with a little bit of help in the background’

Now the outer age limits for both female and male ballet dancers is into the early 40s. While older dancers retain their power and full range of movement at this age, it’s at the cost of never allowing themselves a day off. ‘That’s a grind,’ says Mayes. These days, the decision to retire is often a desire for ‘a life beyond ballet’ and the needs of young families. ‘They’ve achieved what they want to achieve, and the time has come’

Second Acts
One of the perils of dancing while ageing is discovering how difficult it can be to sustain a long career. Mature artists must reinvent themselves for their second act. In a sign of changing times, this can mean working in ways that honour the older dancer

When Diane Busuttil returned to Australia from a fulfilling career as a performer in Germany, she found herself caring for her ailing father for six years. She says the experience ‘helped me to work out movement to support him.’ This led her to take the Dance for PD course offered by Dance for Parkinson’s Australia, which qualifies dancers to teach specialised classes for people living with Parkinson’s Disease. She started Creative Caring, and now delivers dance and theatre programs to care homes all over Sydney

‘Performers work well in this space,’ she says. ‘It’s biggest heart-opening thing I’ve ever done. It’s not me on stage anymore, but it’s still a big love of dancing’

Academia provided the route for Dr Sonia York-Pryce to build her arts career after she stopped dancing. ‘I taught dance for a long time, but I didn’t think of it as a career,’ she says. When she returned to university at the age of 49, she began experimenting with short films about dance. She solved the problem of having no money for talent by filming herself — ‘And suddenly you’re using an older body’

Thus began her interest in the lives and art of older dancers. In 2020, she wrote a thesis at Griffith University named Ageism and the Mature Dancer. She now has a book in production, Still Moving, which is a collection of interviews with professional dance artists here and further afield. She writes scholarly articles and presents at conferences: an authoritative voice for mature performers. ‘I can see my career developed in respect of interviewing, writing and filming these dancers,’ she says

Sue Healey’s early dance career followed a straightforward pathway from training at the Victorian College of the Arts to becoming a founding member of Dance Works with director Nanette Hassall in the 1980s. Later, she became an artistic director herself, but she went solo in 1996. ‘I chose to be an independent artist,’ she says. ‘It’s tricky because you do it all yourself, but creatively it keeps me alive’

Healey turned to filmmaking because ‘I could see that by translating dance on to film, I could reach a wider audience and I could deepen the experience.’ Her films have screened in 30 countries and have been finalists in many film festivals. Making them is ‘an organic process of working in the studio,’ she says. ‘If it involves a cinematographer, there’s another layer of connection.’ With a choreographer’s eye, she ‘moves the camera as well as the dancer’

Independence has its discontents. Funding is a ‘constant challenge’, as does remaining physical without access to daily class. For Busuttil ‘space is one of the biggest challenges’, meaning an affordable location that ‘contains all the ideas you’ve been working on’ in which to write programs and create work. The challenge for York-Pryce is the ‘push to self-promote’ and ‘forcing people to be interested in your subject.’ While they have all had to make their own luck, there’s no talk of quitting. ‘Beg, borrow, steal: you get out there and make the opportunity happen,’ says Healey

Dance Royalty
During the last decade, Healey has produced ON VIEW: ICONS, a collection of film portraits of venerated dance artists that serves as an evolving archive of their immense endowment to Australian art. ‘I now want to look at an older dancer more than a younger dancer,’ she says

Among her icons is the celebrated belle of the ball, Eileen Kramer, who was born in 1914 and joined the Bodenwieser Ballet in 1940. Today, she remains a creative artist at 109. Healey has filmed her several times. ‘The way she moves her hands speaks volumes,’ she says. ‘As her ability to move gets less and less, it’s still loud and clear what she’s trying to express emotionally’

Another icon is Dr Elizabeth Cameron Dalman who founded the Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide in 1965 and was its artistic director for 10 years. In 2002, she founded the Mirramu Creative Arts Centre and Mirramu Dance Company at Lake George with dancer and choreographer Vivienne Rogis. At 90, she continues to teach movement and dance to professional and non-professional dancers. Recently, she choreographed Lake Song for the GOLD group, filmed by Healey

Anca Frankenhaeuser and Patrick Harding-Irmer are dear friends of Kramer and Cameron Dalman. They are life partners who joined the nascent London Contemporary Dance Theatre together in 1973. Frankenhaeuser is from Finland, and Harding-Irmer is from Sydney. He left assuring his mother he was ‘going away for a year to get some dance experience.’ He stayed in London for 18 years where he and Frankenhaeuser became known as groundbreaking artists. London Contemporary Dance Theatre was founded by Robert Cohan, a transformative choreographer and artistic director who kickstarted the British contemporary dance scene, and British philanthropist and dance patron Robin Howard. ‘I felt privileged being there from the beginning,’ says Frankenhaeuser . ‘It was extraordinary to be with something that grows and becomes something else’

They danced with LCDT for 15 years. ‘It was always very active and interesting,’ she says; surely an understatement. They returned to Sydney in 1990 and have worked ever since as teachers and professional dancers. ‘I’m proud to say I’ve never earned money that hasn’t been dance-related,’ says Harding-Irmer. ‘That doesn’t mean I’ve earned a lot of money’

Now, Frankenhaeuser has a Master of Dramatic Art in Movement Studies from NIDA and teaches choreography at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts (AMPA) and movement at the Sydney Actors School (SAS) ‘It’s a good mix,’ she says. ‘I love doing that, it keeps me going.’ Harding-Irmer takes on projects as they are offered to him. ‘I need people to ask me to do stuff,’ he admits. Fortunately, ‘we have a few good projects that will happen in the next few months’

Frankenhaeuser believes the longevity of older artists is attributable to ‘refusing to let age stop you.’ Still, ‘that was then, and this is now. You need to adapt what you’re doing,’ she adds. But older dancers no longer worry about what others think, ‘they just do what they need to do, maybe more from the inside’

Anca Frankenhaeuser and Patrick Harding-Irmer performing their duet Hand Again in 2018
Photo: © Art Adler

Different Bodies
’Because we only see the same body over and over, it makes it more difficult for the viewer,’ says Diane Busuttil. Not only are audiences accustomed to spectacular young bodies but there’s also a prevailing ageism that maintains it’s unseemly to dance later in life. ‘Mature women face a barrier from our culture that says this is something little girls do,’ says Katrina Rank

Dancers themselves are not immune to ageism. Sue Healey remembers how, in her youth, she frowned upon older proponents: ‘Older dancer, choreographer, nah — move on’

Still, ageism is increasingly counterbalanced by a dedicated policy push towards inclusivity in the arts. Sonya York-Price believes that approaches to programming must be reviewed to promote awareness in the mainstream. ‘Visibility is a big thing for older dancers,’ she says

In 2023, Alice Topp created Paragon for The Australian Ballet as part of the Identity program, which celebrated the company’s 60th birthday. She cast returning dancers in the work, blending May and December on stage, foregrounding how the company’s history is transmitted from one generation to the next. It’s programming like this that opens minds

Just as Mick Jagger is in no hurry to exit stage left, neither are many dancers. ‘People used to think they had to stop, but now you get a lot of older dancers who just keep going,’ says Anca Frankenhaeuser. ‘They keep up their practice. It’s not a job, really.’ York-Pryce says, ‘There’s a flame inside them that doesn’t want to go out’

What moves Healey is ‘the layers of embodied knowledge. It’s nuance rather than grand gesture.’ Their quality of movement ‘is more compelling to me. It draws you in and allows you to imagine and to feel much more’

Published in Limelight, July 2024